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TALKS ON TEACHING 
LITERATURE 



TALKS ON TEACHING 
LITERATURE 



BY 

ARLO BATES 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

fltfoe ttitier£ibe pre?£, Cambridge 
1906 



UBKA8Y of CONGRESS 
TwoC&Dtes HectiivwJ 

OCT 13 1906 

0U5S A AAC N9. 






COPYRIGHT 1906 BY ARLO BATES 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published October toot 



These Talks are founded upon lectures deliv- 
ered before the Summer School of the Univer- 
sity of Illinois in June, 1905. The interest 
which was shown in the subject and in the 
views expressed encouraged me to state rather 
more elaborately and in book form what I felt 
in regard to a matter which is certainly of 
great importance, and concerning which so 
many teachers are in doubt. I wish here to 
express my obligation to Assistant-Professor 
Henry G. Pearson, who has very kindly gone 
over the manuscript, and to whom I am in- 
debted for suggestions of great value. 



CONTENTS 



I. THE PROBLEM 1 

II. THE CONDITIONS .... 11 

III. SOME DIFFICULTIES .... 28 

IV. OTHER OBSTACLES .... 39 
V. FOUNDATIONS OF WORK ... 61 

VI. PRELIMINARY WORK ... 74 
VII. THE INSPIRATIONAL USE OF LIT- 
ERATURE 88 

VIII. AN ILLUSTRATION .... 96 

IX. EDUCATIONAL 109 

X. EXAMINATIONAL ..... 121 

XL THE STUDY OF PROSE ... 136 

XII. THE STUDY OF THE NOVEL . . 152 

XIII. THE STUDY OF MACBETH . . 165 

XIV. CRITICISM 193 

XV. LITERARY WORKMANSHIP . . 207 

XVI. LITERARY BIOGRAPHY . . .222 

XVII. VOLUNTARY READING ... 227 

XVIII. IN GENERAL .237 

INDEX 245 



TALKS ON TEACHING 
LITERATURE 



THE PROBLEM 

Few earnest teachers of literature have escaped 
those black moments when it seems perfectly evi- 
dent that the one thing sure in connection with the 
whole business is that literature cannot be taught. 
If they are of sensitive conscience they are likely 
to have wondered at times whether it is honest to 
go on pretending to give instruction in a branch 
in which instruction was so obviously impossible. 
The more they consider, the more evident it is that 
if a pupil really learns anything in literature, — as 
distinguished from learning about literature, — he 
does it himself ; and they cannot fail to see that as 
an art literature necessarily partakes of the nature 
of all art, the quality of being inexpressible and 
unexplainable in any language except its own. 

The root of whatever difficulty exists in fulfill- 
ing the requirements of modern courses of train- 
ing which have to do with literature is just this 
fact. Any art, as has been said often and often, 
exists simply and solely because it embodies and 
conveys what can be adequately expressed in no 



2 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

other form. A picture or a melody, a statue or 
a poem, gives delight and inspiration by qualities 
which could belong to nothing else. To teach 
painting or music or literature is at best to talk 
about these qualities. Words cannot express what 
the work or art expresses, or the work itself would 
be superfluous ; and the teacher of literature is 
therefore apparently confronted with the task of 
endeavoring to impart what language itself cannot 
say. 

So stated the proposition seems self -contradictory 
and absurd. Indeed it too often happens that in 
actual practice it is so. Teachers weary their very 
souls in necessarily fruitless endeavors to achieve 
the impossible, and fail in their work because they 
have not clearly apprehended what they could effect 
and what they should endeavor to effect. In any 
instruction it is of great importance to recognize 
natural and inevitable limitations, and nowhere is 
this more true than in any teaching which has to 
do with the fine arts. In other branches failure to 
perceive the natural restrictions of the subject lim- 
its the efficiency of the teacher ; in the arts it not 
only utterly vitiates all work, but it gives students 
a fundamentally wrong conception of the very 
nature of that with which they are dealing. 

In most studies the teacher has to do chiefly 
with the understanding, or, to put it more exactly, 
with the intellect of the pupil. In dealing with 
literature he must reckon constantly with the emo- 
tions also. If he cannot arouse the feelings and 



THE PROBLEM 3 

the imaginations of his students, he does not suc- 
ceed in his work. Not only is this difficult in it- 
self, but it calls for an emotional condition in the 
instructor which is not easily combined with the 
didactic mood required by teaching ; a condition, 
moreover, which begets a sensitiveness to results 
much more keen than any disappointment likely to 
be excited by failure to carry a class triumphantly 
through a lesson in arithmetic or history. This 
sensitiveness constantly brings discouragement, and 
this in turn leads to renewed failure. In work which 
requires the happiest mood on the part of the 
teacher and the freest play of the imagination, the 
consciousness of any lack of success increases the 
difficulty a hundredfold. The teacher who is able 
by sheer force of determination to manage the 
stupidities of a dull algebra class, may fail signally 
in the attempt to make the same force carry him 
through an unappreciated exercise in " Macbeth." 
It is true that no teaching is effective unless the 
interest as well as the attention of the pupils is 
enlisted : but whereas in other branches this is a 
condition, in the case of literature it is a prime 
essential. 

The teaching of literature, moreover, is less than 
useless if it is not educational as distinguished 
from examinational. It is greatly to be regretted 
that necessity compels the holding of examina- 
tions at all in a subject of which the worth is to 
be measured strictly by the extent to which it 
inspires the imagination and develops the charac- 



4 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

ter of the student. Any system of examinations 
is likely to be at best a makeshift made inevitable 
by existing conditions, and it is rendered tolerable 
only where teachers — often at the expense, under 
present school methods, of a stress of body and 
of soul to be appreciated only by those who have 
taught — are able to mingle a certain amount 
of education with the grinding drill of routine 
work. Examination papers hardly touch and can 
hardly show the results of literary training which 
are the only excuse for the presence of this branch 
in the school curriculum. Every faithful worker 
who is trying to do what is best for the children 
while fulfilling the requirements of the official 
powers above him is face to face with the fact that 
the tabulated returns of intermediates and finals 
do not in the least represent his best or most labo- 
riously achieved success. 

Under these conditions it is not strange that so 
many teachers are at a loss to know what they are 
expected to do or what they should attempt to do. 
If the teachers in the secondary schools of this 
country were brought together into some Palace of 
Truth where absolute honesty was forced upon 
them, it would be interesting and perhaps sadden- 
ing to find how few could confidently assert that 
they have clear and logical ideas in regard to the 
teaching of literature. They would all be able to 
say that they dealt with certain specified books be- 
cause such work is a prominent part of the school 
requirement ; and many would, unless restrained by 



THE PROBLEM 5 

the truth-compelling power of their environment, 
add vague phrases about broadening the minds of 
the children. A pitiful number would be forced to 
confess that they had no clear conception of what 
they were to do beyond loading up the memories of 
the luckless young folk with certain dead informa- 
tion about books to be unloaded at the next exam- 
ination, and there left forever. Too often " broad- 
ening the mind " of the young is simple flattening 
it out by the dead weight of lifeless and worthless 
fact. 

This uncertainty in regard to what they are to 
do and how they are to do it is constantly evident 
in the complaints and inquiries of teachers. " How 
would you teach 'Macbeth '?" one asked me. "Do 
you think the sources of the plot should be thor- 
oughly mastered ? " Another wrote me that she 
had always tried to make the moral lesson of " Silas 
Marner " as clear and strong as possible, but that 
one of her boys had called her attention to the fact 
that no question on such a matter had ever ap- 
peared in the college entrance examination papers, 
and that she did not know what to do. A third 
said frankly that she could never see what there 
was in literature to teach, so she just took the 
questions suggested by a text-book and confined 
her attention to them. If these seem extreme 
cases, it is chiefly because they are put into words. 
Certainly the number of instructors who are vir- 
tually in the position of the third teacher is by no 
means small. 



6 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

Even the editors of " school classics " are some- 
times found to be no more enlightened than those 
they profess to aid, and not infrequently seem more 
anxious to have the appearance of doing a schol- 
arly piece of work than one fitted for actual use. 
The devices they recommend for fixing the atten- 
tion and enlightening the darkness of children in 
literary study are numerous ; but not infrequently 
they are either ludicrous or pathetic. A striking 
example is that conspicuously futile method, the 
use of symbolic diagrams. The attempt to repre- 
sent the poetry, the pathos, the passion of " The 
Merchant of Venice " or " Romeo and Juliet " by 
a diagram like a proposition in geometry seems to 
me not only the height of absurdity, but not a 
little profane. I have examined these cryptic com- 
binations of lines, tangents, triangles, and circles, 
with more bewilderment than comprehension, I 
confess ; generally with irritation ; and always 
with the profound conviction that they could 
hardly be surpassed as a means of producing con- 
fusion worse confounded in the mind of any child 
whatever. Other schemes are only less wild, and 
while excellent and helpful text-books are not 
wanting, not a few show evidence that the writers 
were as little sure of what they were trying to 
effect, or of how it were best effected, as the most 
bewildered teacher who might unadvisedly come to 
them for enlightenment. 

Instruction in literature as it exists to-day in 
the common schools of this country is almost al- 



THE PROBLEM 7 

ways painstaking and conscientious ; but it is by no 
means always intelligent. The teachers who resort 
to diagrams are sincerely in earnest, and no less 
faithful are those who at the expense of most ex- 
hausting labor are dragging classes through the 
morass of questions suggested by the least desirable 
of school editions of college requirements. They 
dose their pupils with notes as Mrs. Squeers dosed 
the poor wretches at Dotheboys Hall with brim- 
stone and treacle. The result is much the same in 
both cases. 

" Oh ! Nonsense," rejoined Mrs. Squeers. ..." They 
have brimstone and treacle, partly because if they had n't 
something or other in the way of medicine they 'd be 
always . . . giving a world of trouble, and partly be- 
cause it spoils their appetites, and comes cheaper than 
breakfast and dinner." 

Certainly any child, no matter how great his nat- 
ural appetite for literature, must find the desire 
greatly diminished after a dose of text-book notes. 
The difficulties of teachers in handling this 
branch of instruction have been increased by the 
system under which work must be carried on. 
The tremendous problem of educating children in 
masses has yet to be solved, and it is at least 
doubtful if it can be worked out successfully with- 
out a very substantial diminution of the require- 
ments now insisted upon. Certainly it is hardly 
conceivable that with the curriculum as crowded 
as it is at present any teacher could do much in 
the common schools with the teaching of literature. 



8 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

The pedagogic committees who have fixed the col- 
lege entrance requirements, moreover, seem to 
have acted largely along conventional lines. In 
the third place the spirit of the time is out of 
sympathy with art, and the variety and insistence 
of outside calls on the attention and interest of 
the children make demands so great as to leave 
the mind dull to finer impressions. To the boy 
eager over football, the circus, and the automobile 
race he is to see when school is out, even an in- 
spired teacher may talk in vain about Dr. Prim- 
rose, Lady Macbeth, or any other of the immor- 
tals. Ears accustomed to the strident measures of 
the modern street-song are not easily beguiled by 
the music of Milton, and yet the teacher of to-day 
is expected to persuade his flock that they should 
prefer " L' Allegro " to the vulgar but rollicking 
" rag-time " comic songs of dime-museum and alley. 
Under circumstances so adverse, it is not to be 
wondered at that teachers are not only discour- 
aged but often bewildered. 

What happens in many cases is sufficiently well 
shown by this extract from a freshman composi- 
tion, in which the writer frankly gives an account 
of his training in English literature in a high 
school not twenty-five miles from Boston : 

Very special attention was paid to the instruction of 
the classics as to what the examinations require. As 
closely as possible the faculty determine the scope of 
the examinations, and the class is drilled in that work 
especially. Examination papers are procured for sev- 



THE PROBLEM 9 

eral years back, and are given to the students as regular 
high school examinations, and as samples of the kind of 
questions to be expected. The instructors notice espe- 
cial questions that are often repeated in examination 
papers, warn the pupils of them, and even go so far as 
to estimate when the question will be used again. I 
have heard in the classroom, " This question was given 
three years ago, and it is about due again. They ask it 
every three or four years." 

Another boy wrote, in the same set of themes, that 
lie had taken the examination in the autumn, and 
added : 

On the June examinations I noticed that there was 
nothing about Milton, so I studied Milton with heart 
and soul. 

Here we find stated plainly what everybody con- 
nected with teaching knows to be common, and 
indeed what under the present system is almost 
inevitable. I know of many schools of no incon- 
siderable standing where in all branches old exam- 
ination papers, if not used as the text-books, are 
at least the actual guide to all work done in the 
last year of fitting for college. This is perhaps 
only human, and it is easy to understand ; but it 
certainly is not education, and of that fact both 
students and teachers are entirely well aware. All 
this I say with no intention of blaming anybody 
for what is the result of difficult conditions. It is 
not well, however, to ignore what is perfectly well 
known, and what is one of the important difficulties 
of the situation. 



10 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

The problem, then, which confronts the teacher 
in the secondary school is twofold. He has to de- 
cide in the first place what the teaching of litera- 
ture can and should legitimately accomplish, and 
in the second, by what means this may most surely 
and effectively be done. In a word, although work 
in this line has been going on multitudinously and 
confusedly for years, we are yet far from suffi- 
ciently definite ideas why and how literature should 
be taught to children. 



II 

THE CONDITIONS 

The inclusion of literature in the list of com- 
mon school studies, however the original intent 
may have been lost sight of, was undoubtedly- 
made in the interest of general culture. It is 
not certain that those who put it in had definite 
conceptions of methods or results, but unquestion- 
ably their idea was to aid the development of the 
children's minds by helping them to appreciate 
and to assimilate thoughts of nobility and of 
beauty, and by fostering a love for literature which 
should lead them to go on acquiring these from 
the masterpieces. How clear and well defined in 
the minds of educators this idea was it is need- 
less to inquire. It is enough that it was undoubt- 
edly sincere, and that it was founded on a genuine 
faith in the broadening and elevating influence of 
art. 

The importance of literature as a means of 
mental development used to be taken for granted. 
Our fathers and grandfathers had for the classics 
a reverence which the rising generation looks back 
to as a phase of antiquated superstition, hardly 
more reasonable than the worship of sacred wells 
or a belief in goblins. So much stress is now laid 



12 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

upon the tangible and the material as the only- 
genuine values, that everything less obvious is dis- 
credited. The tendency is to take only direct re- 
sults into consideration ; and influences which serve 
rather to elevate character than to aid in money- 
getting are at best looked upon with toleration. 

That sense of mankind, however, which depends 
upon the perception of the few, and which in the 
long run forms the opinion of society in spite of 
everything, holds still to the importance of litera- 
ture in any intelligent scheme of education. The 
popular disbelief makes enormously difficult the 
work of the teacher, but the force of the convic- 
tion of the wise minority keeps this branch in the 
schools. The sincere teacher, therefore, naturally 
tries to analyze effects, and to discern possibilities, 
in order to discover upon what facts the belief in 
the educational value of the study of literature 
properly rests. 

The most obvious reasons for the study of liter- 
ature may be quickly disposed of. It is well for a 
student to be reasonably familiar with the history 
of literature, with the names and periods of great 
writers. This adds to his chances of appearing to 
advantage in the world, and especially in that por- 
tion of society where he can least afford to be at 
a disadvantage. He is provided with facts about 
books and authors quite as much to protect him 
from the ill effects of appearing ignorant as for 
any direct influence this knowledge will have on 
his mind. Whatever the tendency of the times to 



THE CONDITIONS 13 

undervalue in daily life acquaintance with the 
more refined side of human knowledge, the fact 
remains that to betray ignorance in these lines 
may bring real harm to a person's social standing. 
Every one recognizes that among educated people 
a lad is better able to make his way if he does not 
confound the age of Shakespeare with that of 
Browning, and if he is able to distinguish between 
Edmund Spenser and Herbert Spencer. Such in- 
formation may not be specially vital, but it is worth 
possessing. 

Considerations of this sort, however, are evi- 
dently not of weight enough to account for the 
place of the study in the schools, and still less to 
excuse the amount of time and attention bestowed 
upon it. The same line of reasoning would defend 
the introduction of dancing, because 

Those move easiest who have learned to dance. 

More important and more far-reaching reasons 
must be found to satisfy the teacher, and to 
hearten him for the severe labor of working with 
class after class in the effort, not always success- 
ful, of arousing interest and enthusiasm over 
the writings which go by the name of English 
Classics. Some of these I may specify briefly. 
To deal with them exhaustively would take a book 
in itself, and would leave no room for the consid- 
eration of methods. 

A careful and intelligent study of masterpieces 
of prose or verse, the teacher soon perceives, must 



14 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

develop greatly the student's sense of the value of 
words. This is not the highest function of this 
work, but it is by no means one to be despised. 
Literary study affords opportunities for training of 
this sort which are not to be found elsewhere ; and 
a sensitiveness to word-values is with a child the 
beginning of wisdom. 

Children too often acquire and adults follow the 
habit of accepting words instead of ideas. A gen- 
uine appreciation of the worth of language is after 
all the chief outward sign of the distinction be- 
tween the wise man and the dullard. One is content 
to receive speech as sterling coin, and the other 
perceives that words are but counters. If students 
could but appreciate the difference between appre- 
hending and comprehending what they are taught, 
between learning words and assimilating ideas, the 
intellectual millennium would be at hand. Chil- 
dren need to learn that the sentence is after all 
only the envelope, only the vehicle for the thought. 
Everybody agrees to this theoretically, but practi- 
cally the fact is generally ignored. The child is 
father to the man in nothing else more surely than 
in the trait of accepting in perfect good faith empty 
words as complete and satisfactory in themselves. 
The habit of being content with phrases once bred 
into a child can be eradicated by nothing short of 
severe intellectual surgery. 

To say that words are received as sufficient in 
themselves and not as conveying ideas sounds like 
a paradox ; but there are few of us who may not at 



THE CONDITIONS 15 

once make a personal application and find an illus- 
tration in the common phrases and formulas of our 
life. Perhaps none of us are free from the fault 
of sometimes substituting empty phrases for vital 
rules of conduct. The most simple and the most 
tremendous facts of human life are often known 
only as lifeless statements rather than realized as 
vibrant truths. With children the language of 
text-book or classroom is so likely to be repeated 
by rote and remembered mechanically that con- 
stant vigilance on the part of the teacher can 
hardly overcome the evil. Force the boy who on 
the college entrance examination paper writes flu- 
ently that " Milton is the poet of sublimity " to 
try to define, even to himself, what the statement 
means, and the result is confusion. He meant 
nothing. He had the words, but they had never 
conveyed to him a thought. Language should be 
the servant of the mind, but never was servant that 
so constantly and so successfully usurped the place 
of master. 

Children must be taught, and taught not simply 
by precept but by experience, to realize that the 
value of the word lies solely in its efficiency as a 
vehicle of thought. They must learn to appreciate 
as well as to know mechanically that language is 
to be estimated by its effect in communicating the 
idea, and that to be satisfied with words for them- 
selves is obvious folly. For enforcing this fact lit- 
erature is especially valuable. It is hardly possible 
in even the most superficial work on a play of 



16 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

Shakespeare, for instance, for the reader to fail to 
perceive how the idea burns through the word, 
how wide is the difference between the mere ap- 
prehension of the language and the comprehension 
of the poet's meaning. In the study of great po- 
etry the impossibility of resting satisfied with any- 
thing short of the ideas is so strongly brought out 
that it cannot be ignored or forgotten ; and in this 
way pupils are impressed with the value of words. 
This sensitiveness to the value of words in gen- 
eral is closely coupled with an appreciation of the 
force of words in particular, of what may be called 
word-values. The power of appreciating that a 
word is merely a messenger bringing an idea, is 
naturally connected with the ability to distinguish 
with exactness the nature and the value of the 
thought which the messenger presents. To feel the 
need of knowing clearly and surely the thought 
expressed inevitably leads to precision and del- 
icacy in distinguishing the significance and force 
of language. When once a child appreciates the 
difference between the accepting of what he reads 
vaguely or mechanically and the getting from it 
its full meaning, he is eager to have it all; he 
finds delight in the intellectual exercise of search- 
ing out each hidden suggestion and in the sense of 
possession which belongs to achieving the thought 
of the master. It is not to be expected that our 
pupils shall be able to receive in its full richness 
the deepest thought of the poets, but they none 
the less find delight in possessing it to the extent 



THE CONDITIONS 17 

of their abilities. The point is too obvious to need 
expansion ; but every instructor will recognize its 
great importance. 

Obvious as is this importance of the sense of the 
value of words and a sensitiveness to word- values, 
it is not infrequently overlooked. Teachers see 
the need of a knowledge of the meaning of terms 
and phrases in a particular selection without stop- 
ping to think of the prime value of the principle 
involved, or indeed that a general principle is in- 
volved at all. Still more often they fail to perceive 
all that logically follows. In exact, vital realiza- 
tion of the full force of language lies the secret of 
sharing the wisdom of the ages. If students can 
be trained to penetrate through the word of the 
printed page to the thought, they are brought into 
communication with the master-minds of the race. 
It is not learning to read in the common, primary 
acceptation of the term that opens for the young 
the thought of the race ; but learning to read in 
the higher and deeper sense of receiving the word 
only as a symbol behind and beyond which the 
thought lies concealed from the ordinary and su- 
perficial reader. 

Most of all is it the business of the young to 
learn about life. Whatever does not tend, directly 
or indirectly, to make the child better acquainted 
with the world he has come into, with how he must 
and how he should bear himself under its complex 
conditions, is of small value as far as education 
goes. Of rules for conduct he is given plenty as 



18 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

to matters of morality and of religion. Moral 
laws and religious precepts are good, and could 
they accomplish all that is sometimes expected of 
them, life would quickly be a different matter, and 
teachers would find themselves living in an earthly 
paradise. Unhappily these excellent maxims effect 
in actual life far less than is to be desired. Not 
infrequently the urchin who has been stuffed with 
moral admonitions as a doll with sawdust shows in 
his conduct no regard for them other than a fine 
zeal in scorning them. Children are seldom much 
affected by explicit directions in regard to conduct. 
They must be reached by indirection, and they are 
moulded less by what they recognize as intention- 
ally wise views of life than by those which they 
receive unconsciously. The more just these un- 
recognized ideas of themselves and of the world 
are, the greater is the chance that they will develop 
a character well balanced and well adjusted to the 
conditions of human life. 

Children live in a world largely made up of half- 
perceptions, of misunderstandings, and of dreams ; 
a world pathetically full of guesses. They must 
depend largely upon appearances, and constantly 
confound what seems with what really is. They learn 
but slowly, however, to shape their beliefs or their 
emotions by conventionality. They do not easily 
acquire the vice of accepting shams because some 
authority has endorsed these. All of us are likely to 
have had queerly uncomfortable moments when we 
have found ourselves confounded and reproved by 



THE CONDITIONS 19 

the unflinching honesty of the child ; and we have 
been forced to confess, at least to ourselves, that 
much of our admiration is mere affectation, many 
of our professions unadulterated truckling to some 
authority in which after all we have little real 
faith. Children are naturally too unsophisticated 
for self-deception of this sort. They confound sub- 
stance and shadow, but they do it in good faith 
and with no affectations. They are therefore at 
the place where they most need sound and sure 
help to apprehend and to comprehend those things 
which their elders call the realities of life. 

What human nature and human life are like 
is learned most quickly and most surely from the 
best literature. The outward, the evident condi- 
tions of society and of humanity may perhaps be 
best obtained by children from the events of every- 
day existence ; but in all that goes deeper the wis- 
dom of great writers is the surest guide. 

On the face of it such a proposition may not 
seem self-evident, and to not a few teachers it is 
likely to appear a little absurd. Children, it is 
evident, learn the realities of life by living. They 
perceive physical truth by the persuasive force of 
actual experience : by tumbling down and bump- 
ing their precious noses ; by unmistakably impress- 
ive contact with the fist of a pugnacious school- 
fellow ; by being hungry or un comfortably stuffed 
with Thanksgiving turkey ; by heat and by cold, 
by sweets or by sours, by hardness or by softness. 
Certainly through such means as these the child 



20 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

gains knowledge and develops mentally ; but the 
process is inevitably slow. Most of all is the 
growth in the youthful mind of general deductions 
and the perception of underlying principles ex- 
tremely gradual. He does not learn quickly 
enough that certain lines of conduct are likely to 
lead to unfortunate ends. Even when this is 
grasped, he has not come to appreciate what human 
laws underlie the whole matter ; nor is he in the 
least likely to realize them so fully as to shape by 
them his conduct in the steadily more and more 
complicated affairs of life. 

The small boy learns the wisdom of moderation 
from the stomach-ache which follows too much 
plum-pudding or too many green apples — if the 
pain is often enough repeated. The matter, how- 
ever, is apt to present itself to his mind as a sort 
of tacit bargain between himself and Fate: so 
many green apples, so much stomach-ache ; so 
much self-indulgence and so much pain, and the 
account is balanced. Life is not so simple as this ; 
and that Fate does not make bargains so* direct is 
learned from experience so gradually as often to 
be learned too late. To tell this to a child is of 
very little effect ; for even if he believes it with his 
childish intelligence, he can hardly feel the inti- 
mate links which bind all humanity together, and 
make him subject to the same conditions that rule 
his elders and instructors. 

The phrase "realities of life," moreover, in- 
cludes not only sensible — that is, material — 



THE CONDITIONS 21 

facts and conditions, but the more subtle things of 
inner existence. A hundred persons are able to 
gather facts, while very few are capable of draw- 
ing from them adequate conclusions or of perceiv- 
ing how one truth bears upon another. A very 
moderate degree of intelligence is required for 
analysis as compared to that necessary for synthe- 
sis. The power " to put two and two together," as 
the common phrase has it, grows slowly in the 
mind of a child. Within a limited range children 
appreciate that one fact is somehow joined to an- 
other ; and indeed the education which life gives 
consists chiefly in expanding this perception. The 
connection between touching a hot coal and being 
burned brings home the plain physical relations 
early. The connection between disobedience and 
unpleasant consequences will be borne in upon the 
youthful consciousness according to the sharpness 
of discipline by which it is enforced ; and so on to 
the end of the chapter. To perceive a relation and 
to appreciate what that relation is are, however, 
different matters. The understanding of the na- 
ture of breaking rules and suffering in consequence 
involves a perception of underlying principle, and 
some comprehension of the real nature of these 
principles. 

The part which literature may play in giving 
children, and for that matter their elders, a vivid 
perception of moral laws is shown by the use which 
has been made of fables and moral tales. The par- 
ables of Scripture illustrate the point. Of the 



22- TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

habit of making literature directly a vehicle for 
moral instruction by the drawing of morals I shall 
have something to say later; but the extent to 
which this has been done at least serves here to 
make clearer what we mean by saying that in this 
study the child learns general principles and their 
relation. The small child, for instance, who is told 
in tender years that ingeniously virtuous fable 
which relates the heroic doings of little George 
Washington and his immortal hatchet, gets some 
idea of a connection between virtue and joy in the 
abstract. A notion faint, but none the less gen- 
uine, remains in his mind that some real connec- 
tion exists between truth and desirability ; and the 
same sort of thing holds true in cases where the 
teaching is less directly didactic. 

The directly didactic is likely to be most in evi- 
dence in the training of children, and so affords 
convenient illustration of the illuminating effect of 
literature on young minds. Despite the fact that 
I disbelieve in reading into any tale or poem a 
moral which is not expressly put there by the au- 
thor, and that I hold more strongly yet to the belief 
that the most marked and most lasting effects of 
imaginative work are indirect, I am not without a 
perception of the value at a certain stage of human 
development of the direct moral of the fable and 
the improving tale. A small lad of ten within the 
range of my observation, upon whom had been 
lavished an abundance, and perhaps even a super- 
abundance, of moral precept, astonished and dis- 



THE CONDITIONS 23 

concerted his mother by remarking with delightful 
naivete that he had at school been reading " The 
Little Merchant," in Miss Edgeworth's " Parents' 
Assistant," and that from it he had learned how 
mean and foolish it is to lie. " But, my dear boy," 
the mother cried in dismay, " I 've been telling 
you that ever since you were born ! " " Oh, well," 
responded the lad, with the unconsciously brutal 
frankness of his years, " but that never interested 
me." The obvious moral teaching that had made 
no impression when offered as a bare precept had 
been effective to him when presented as an appeal 
to his feeling. 

Through imaginative literature abstract truths 
are made to have for the child a reality which 
is given to them by the experiences of daily life 
only by the slowest of degrees. Children rarely 
generalize, except in matters of personal feeling 
and in the regions of general misapprehension. 
A child easily receives the fact of the moment 
for a truth of all time : if he is miserable, for 
instance, he is very apt to feel that he must al- 
ways be in that doleful condition ; but this is in 
no real sense a generalization. It is more than half 
self-deception. Any child, however, who has been 
thrilled by a single line of imaginative poetry has 
— even if unconsciously — come into direct touch 
with a wide and humanly universal truth. 

Especially and essentially is this to be said of 
truth which has to do with human feeling, the 
universal truth of the emotions. The man or the 



24 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

woman into whom the school-boy or girl is to grow 
will in shaping life be guided chiefly by the feel- 
ings. Whether the ordinary mortal lives well or 
ill, basely or nobly, dully or vividly, is practically 
determined by what he feels. However much the 
convictions have to do in ordering conduct, feeling 
has more, and conviction itself is with most mor- 
tals inseparably bound up with the emotions. The 
highest office of education is to develop the emo- 
tions highly and nobly ; and it is no less essential 
to the intellectual than to the moral well-being 
of the child that he be bred to feel as deeply and 
as wholesomely as possible. Every teacher knows 
that in dealing with children the ultimate appeal 
is to their feelings. If a crisis arises in school-life 
it is to the emotions that the matter is inevitably 
referred, whether the instructor likes this or not, 
and whether the appeal is made openly or is indi- 
rect and tacit. Teaching must deal with the senti- 
ments as well as with the understanding. That no 
other means of training and properly developing 
the feelings of youth is so efficient as literature 
seems to me a proposition too self-evident to need 
further comment. 

Enthusiasm is so closely connected with the cul- 
tivation and training of the emotions that it is not 
easy to draw a line between them. While there is 
certainly no need to enlarge here upon the worth 
of enthusiasm in education or in life, or upon lit- 
erature as a means of arousing it, it is worth while 
to emphasize the extent to which the mind of 



THE CONDITIONS 25 

youth may be affected by enthusiasm. The effects 
are naturally often so indirect or intangible as not 
to be easily measured, but often, too, they are 
direct and practical. Some years ago in a country 
school in eastern Maine was still paramount the 
oldrtime Greenleaf 's " Arithmetic " which we elders 
remember with mixed feelings. The law of educa- 
tion in those days, when children were still ex- 
pected to do things which were mapped out for 
them and to follow a course of study whether it 
chanced to please their individual fancy or not, 
enforced the mastering of everything in the text- 
book, even to sundry weird processes with queer 
names such as " Alligation Alternate " and the 
like. The teacher of this particular school, a 
plucky morsel of New England womanhood, not 
much bigger than a chickadee, set herself reso- 
lutely to carry through the arithmetic a class of 
farmer lads, better at the plow than in mathe- 
matics. What happened she told me twenty-five 
years ago, and I am still able to call up the vision 
of the air half of defiance, half of amusement with 
which she said: "The boys were in a perfectly 
hopeless muddle. I had explained and explained, 
until I wished I could either cry like a woman or 
be a man and swear ! The third day I had an 
inspiration. In the very middle of the recitation, 
I told them to shut up their books, and I cleaned 
every mark of the lesson off of the blackboard. 
Then without a word of explanation I began to tell 
them a little about the pamphlet Sir Walter Ea- 



A 



26 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 



leigh wrote about the ' Revenge ; ' and then I began 
to recite Tennyson's ballad — which was new then. 
I was wrought up to the very top-notch anyway, 
and I just gave that ballad for all there was in 
me. They were dazed a minute, and then they 
pricked up their ears, their eyes began to shine, 
and I had them. We kindled each other, and by 
the time I got through the tears were running 
down my cheeks for simple excitement. When I 
got to the end, you could just feel the hush. Then 
I told them to go outdoors and snow-ball for ten 
minutes, and then to come in and conquer that 
lesson. They were great, rough farmer boys, you 
understand ; but the moment they were outside, 
they gave a cheer, just to express things they 
could n't have put into words. When they came in 
they were alive to the ends of their fingers, and we 
went over that old Alligation with a perfect rush." 
This sort of thing would not be possible anywhere 
outside of the old-fashioned country school, but it 
is a capital illustration of the way in which poetry 
may stir the enthusiasm. 

More valuable still, because at once deeper and 
most lasting, is the effect of literature in nourish- 
ing imagination. The real progress which children 
make in education — the assimilation of the know- 
ledge which they receive — depends largely upon 
this power. In many branches of study this is 
easily evident. What a child actually knows of 
geography or of history obviously depends upon 
the extent to which his mind is able to make real 



THE CONDITIONS 27 

places or events remote in space or in time. The 
same is true of those studies where the fact is not 
so evident ; and it is hardly too much to say that 
the advance of any student in higher education is 
measured by the development of his imagination. 

The teacher of literature in the secondary 
schools, then, is to consider that although his work 
is primarily done as a part of the school require- 
ment, he need not be without some clear and de- 
liberate intention in regard to the permanent effect 
upon the education and so upon the character of 
the pupil. He may treat the getting of his charges 
through the examinations as a purely secondary 
matter ; a matter, moreover, which is practically 
sure to be accomplished if the greater and better 
purposes of the study have been secured. Besides 
a general knowledge of literary history, the stu- 
dent should gain from his training in the second- 
ary school a vivid sense of the importance and 
value of words ; an appreciation of word-values as 
shown in actual use by the masters ; should in- 
crease in knowledge of life, and as it were gain 
experience vicariously, so as to advance in percep- 
tion of intellectual and moral values ; should be 
advanced in the control of the feelings ; in enthu- 
siasm ; and in the development of that noblest of 
faculties, the imagination. 






Ill 

SOME DIFFICULTIES 

To deal clearly with the work of teaching, it is 
first of all essential to deal frankly. In order that 
suggestions in regard to instruction in literature 
may be of practical value, we must be entirely 
honest in admitting and in facing whatever diffi- 
culties lie in the way and whatever limitations are 
imposed by the conditions under which the work 
is done. 

As things are at present arranged, an instructor, 
it seems not unjust to say, must decide how far he 
is able to mingle genuine education with the rou- 
tine work which the system imposes upon him. If 
he has not the power to settle this question, or 
if he is lacking in the disposition to propose the 
question to himself, his labor is inevitably confined 
chiefly to routine. His students are turned out 
examination-perfect, it may be, but with minds as 
fatally cramped and checked as the feet of a Chi- 
nese lady. If literature has a high and important 
function in education, the teacher must consider 
deeply both what that function is and how he is 
best to develop it. 

The failure on the part of instructors to do this 
makes much of the work done in the secondary 



SOME DIFFICULTIES 29 

grades so mechanical as to be of the smallest pos- 
sible use so far as the expansion of the mind and 
of the character of children is concerned. For a 
pupil in the lower grades the first purpose of any 
and of all school-work should be to teach him to 
use his mind, — to think. The actual acquirement 
of facts is of importance really slight as compared 
to the value of this. If at twelve he knows how to 
read and to write, is sound on the multiplica- 
tion-table, is familiar with the outlines of grammar 
and the broadest divisions of geography, yet is 
accustomed to think for himself in regard to the 
facts which he perceives from life or receives from 
books, he may be regarded as admirably well on in 
the education which he is to gain from the schools. 
Indeed, if he have learned to think, he is excellently 
started even if he have accomplished nothing fur- 
ther than simply to read and to write. 

In these years of child-life the study of litera- 
ture can legitimately have but two objects : it may 
and should minister to the delight of youth, that 
so the taste for good books be fostered and as it 
were inbred ; and it should nourish the power of 
thinking. Whatever is beyond this has no place 
in the lower grades, and personally I am entirely 
free to say that much that is now called " the study 
of literature " is the sort of elaborate work which 
belongs in the college or nowhere. Few students 
are qualified to " study " — as the term is com- 
monly interpreted — literature until they are ad- 
vanced further than the boys and girls admitted to 



30 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

our high schools ; further, indeed, than many who 
are allowed to enter the universities. The great 
majority of those who grind laboriously through 
the college entrance requirements in English are 
utterly unequal to the work and get from it little 
of value and a good deal of harm. 

What should be done in the lower grades, and 
usually all that can with profit be attempted in the 
secondary schools anywhere, is to cultivate in 
the children a love of literature and some appre- 
ciation of it : appreciation intelligent, I mean, but 
not analytic. I would have the secondary schools 
do little with the history of authors, less with the 
criticism of style, and have no more explanation 
of difficulties of language and of structure than is 
necessary for the student's enjoyment. In a time 
when the draughts made by daily life upon the 
attention of the young are so tremendous, when 
the pressure of the more immediately practical 
branches of instruction is so great, to add drudg- 
ery in connection with literature seems to me com- 
pletely futile and doubly wrong. The supreme test 
of success in whatever work in literature is done 
in schools of the secondary grades should be, 
according to my conviction, whether it has given 
delight, has fostered a love of whatever is best in 
imaginative writings and in life. 

The natural abilities of children differ widely, 
and perhaps more difference still is made by the 
home influences in which they pass their earliest 
years. What should be done in the nursery can 



SOME DIFFICULTIES 31 

never be fully made up in the school, and what 
should be breathed in from an atmosphere of cul- 
tivation can never be imparted by instruction. It 
is manifestly impossible to interest all in the artis- 
tic side of life to the same extent, just as it is idle 
to hope to teach all to draw with equal skill. This 
does not alter the direction of effort. The teacher 
must recognize and accept natural limitations, but 
not on that account be satisfied with aiming at less 
admirable results. 

Whatever are the conditions, it is possible to do 
something to foster a love of what is really good 
in literature, and to avoid the substitution of 
formal drill in the history of authors, the study of 
conundrums concerning the sources of plots, the 
meaning of obsolete words, and like pedantic ped- 
agogics, for the friendly and vital study of what 
should be a warm, live topic. If young folk can 
be made really to care for good books, not only is 
substantial and lasting good gained, but most that 
is now attempted is more surely secured. William 
Blake declares that the truth can never be told so 
as to be understood and not be believed. In the 
same way it may be said that if children can be 
trained to recognize the characteristics of good 
literature, they are sure, in nine cases out of ten 
at least, to care for it. 

This is the work which properly belongs to the 
secondary schools ; and it is quite as much as they 
can be expected to do even up to the close of the 
high school course. I am personally unable to see 



32 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

what good is accomplished by taking any body of 
school-children that ever came under my own ob- 
servation, — and the question must be judged by 
personal experience, — and drilling them in such 
matters as the following. I have taken these notes 
almost at random from approved school editions 
of the classics, and they seem to me to be fairly 
representative. 

Some striking resemblances in the incantation scenes- 
in " Macbeth " and Middleton's " Witch " have led to 
a somewhat generally accepted belief that Thomas Mid- 
dleton was answerable for the alleged un-Shakespearean 
portions of " Macbeth." 

Shakespeare's indebtedness in " Midsummer's Night's 
Dream " to " II Percone " admits of no dispute. 

The incident of a Jew whetting his knife like Shylock 
occurs in a Latin play, " Machiavellus," performed at 
St. John's College, Cambridge, at Christmas, 1597. 

The opening note in a popular edition of " Silas 
Marner " is a comment upon this passage : 

The questionable sound of Silas's loom, so unlike the 
natural, cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or 
the simple rhythm of the flail, had a half -fearful fas- 
cination for the Raveloe boys. 

The note reads as follows : 

The hand-loom, once found in every village and ham- 
let, was controlled by the action of the feet on the 
treadles, and worked by the hands. A figure represent- 
ing the parts may be found in " Johnson's Cyclopaedia." 
The longer article on " Weaving " in the " Encyclopae- 
dia Britannica " may also be consulted. The rattle of 



SOME DIFFICULTIES 33 

the loom was in direct contrast to the " cheerful trot- 
ting " of the winn owing-machine — an old-fashioned 
hand-machine for separating the chaff from the grain 
by means of wind produced by revolving fans. The 
flail, still in common use for threshing grain by hand, 
consists of a wooden staff or handle, hung on a club 
called a swiple, so as to turn easily. 

If the end of the study of fiction is the acquire- 
ment of dry facts, this note may pass. I have pur- 
posely selected an example which is not worse than 
the average, and which may perhaps be supposed 
to have an excuse in the consideration that so 
many readers may be ignorant of all the contriv- 
ances mentioned ; but can any person with a sense 
of humor suppose that a real boy is to get any 
proper enjoyment out of a story when he is at the 
outset asked to consult a couple of cyclopaedias, 
and is interrupted in his reading by comments of 
this sort ? The real point of the passage, more- 
over, — the literary significance, — the fact that 
the boys of Raveloe heard the winnowing-machine 
and threshing-flail daily, and so were attracted by 
the novelty of Marner's weaving, with the use of 
this by George Eliot to emphasize the weaver's 
isolation in the neighborhood, is left utterly unno- 
ticed. 

Were it worth while, I could give from text- 
books in general use examples more unsatisfactory 
than these ; but this is a fair sample of the things 
which are administered to pupils in the name of 
literary study. The students are not interested in 



34 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

these details; and I am inclined to believe that 
most of the teachers who mistakenly feel obliged 
to drill classes in them could not honestly say that 
they themselves care a fig for such barren facts. 
It is no wonder that out of the school course young 
folk so often get the notion that literature is dull. 
In a recent entrance paper a boy wrote as fol- 
lows : 

I could never understand why so much time has to 
be given in school to old books just because they have 
been known a long time. It would be fetter if we could 
have given the time to something useful 

He said what many boys feel, and what not a few 
of them have thought out frankly to themselves, 
although perhaps few would express it so squarely. 
If the study of literature means no more than is 
represented by work on notes and the history of 
books and authors, I most fully agree with him. 

Some of the books at present included in the 
college entrance requirement, it must be added, 
lend themselves too much to unintelligent ped- 
antry. Undoubtedly much thought has been given 
to the selection, although perhaps less sympathetic 
consideration of child nature. The result is not 
in all cases satisfactory. To foster a taste for 
poetry a teacher may, it is true, do much with 
" Julius Caesar," but I have yet to see the class of 
undergraduates with which I should personally 
hope to arouse enthusiasm with " L'Allegro," " II 
Penseroso," " Lycidas," or " Comus." I may be 
simply confessing my own limitations, but I should 



SOME DIFFICULTIES 35 

think all of these poems, magnificent in themselves, 
hardly fitted for the boys and girls who are found 
in our public schools. I have extracted from more 
than one teacher a confession of entire inability 
to take pleasure in the Milton which they assure 
their pupils is beautiful ; and while this is an ar- 
raignment of instructors rather than of the works, 
it is significant of the attitude the honest minds 
of children are likely to take. 

By way of making things worse, scholars are 
drilled in Macaulay's " Milton." * The inclusion of 
this essay, the product of the author's 'prentice 
hand, is most lamentable. The philistinism of 
Macaulay is here rampant; and the one thing 
which students are sure to get from the essay is 
the conception that poetry is the product of bar- 
barism, to be outgrown and cast aside when civil- 
ization is sufficiently advanced. Again and again 
in entrance examinations and in second-year note- 
books, I have found this idea expressed. It is 
not only the one thing which survives out of the 
essay, but is often the one conviction in regard to 
literature which has survived examinations as the 
result of the study of the entire entrance require- 
ment. In the entrance paper of the Massachu- 
setts Institute of Technology for last year (1905), 
I had put a question in regard to the difference 

1 Since this was written this essay has been removed from the 
list, hut the effects of it are still with us, as it was used for all 
classes entering- college before 1906. I leave this comment, how- 
ever, because of its important bearing- on a point which I wish 
to bring up later. 



36 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

between poetry and prose. From the replies I 
have taken a few of the many echoes from the 
study of the « Milton." 

Macaulay claims that the uncivilized alone care for 
poetry. 

I agree with Macaulay that prose is the product of 
civilization, . . . while poetry was the way the ancients 
expressed themselves. 

Poetry is not being written nearly so much now as in 
the Dark Ages, simply because men are learning to 
treat subjects in classes. 

Macaulay says that the writer of a great poem must 
have a certain unsoundness of mind, and Carlyle makes 
the statement that to be a great poet a man must first be 
as a little child. If these opinions are just, one would 
think poetry could not be regarded as of a quality equal 
to prose works. 

Poetry came first in the lapse of time, and as people 
grew more civilized, as their education grew higher, they 
wrote in prose. 

Obviously these extracts hardly do justice to 
the views of Macaulay, but it is evidently absurd 
to try to interest pupils in poetry when they are 
getting from one of the works selected " for care- 
ful study " the idea that the poet is a semi-mad- 
man practicing one of the habits of a half-civilized 
race ! x 

Fortunately much of the reading is better, al- 
though in effect the books are sometimes limited 
by the difficulty of keeping the interest of children 

1 See page 212. 



SOME DIFFICULTIES 37 

up for the long poem. The inclusion in the list of 
" Elaine " and " The Lady of the Lake " of course 
presupposes on the part of the pupil familiarity 
in the lower grades with lyrics and brief narrative 
poems ; and in many cases this may be sufficient. 
Most pupils will be sure to care for " The Ancient 
Mariner," many for " The Princess ; " and any 
wholesome boy, with ordinary intelligence, should 
be interested in " Ivanhoe " and " Macbeth." 

As things stand, however, the teacher is forced 
to deal largely with books which almost compel 
formal and pedantic treatment. Burke's " Speech 
on Conciliation," admirable as it is in its place and 
way, will hardly give to a young student an insight 
into literature or a taste for imaginative work. 
The normal, average lad is likely, it seems to me, 
to be bored by " Silas Marner," or at least very 
mildly interested ; and I confess frankly my in- 
ability to understand how youthful enthusiasm is 
to be aroused or more than youthful tolerance 
secured for Irving's " Life of Goldsmith " or Ma- 
caulay's " Life of Johnson." Plenty of pupils are 
docile enough to allow themselves to be led placidly 
through these works, and indeed to submit to any 
volume imposed by school regulations ; but what 
the teacher is endeavoring to do is to convince the 
young readers that books entitled to the name 
" literature " are really of more worth and inter- 
est than the newspaper, the detective story, the 
sensational novel, or the dime-theatre song. It 
is perhaps not possible to find among the English 



38 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

Classics works well adapted to such use, — although 
I refuse to believe it, — but I do at least feel that 
the present entrance-requirement list does not lend 
itself readily, to say the least, to the task of the 
teacher who aims at developing an intelligent and 
loving appreciation of literature. 

The list of obstacles which beset the way of a 
teacher of literature might easily be lengthened ; 
but these seem chief. They are discouraging ; but 
they exist. They must be faced and overcome, and 
nothing is gained by ignoring them. The success- 
ful teacher, like the successful general, is he who 
most clearly examines difficulties, and best suc- 
ceeds in devising means by which they may be van- 
quished. 



IV 

OTHER OBSTACLES 

The difficulties set down in the last chapter 
exist in the conditions under which teachers must 
work. They should be recognized, to the end that 
they may be as far as possible overcome. They 
can be done away with only by the slow and grad- 
ual changing of public opinion and the re-forming 
of pedagogic intelligence. For the present they 
are to be reckoned with as inevitable limitations. 

Another class of obstacles to the ideal result 
of the teaching of literature exists largely in the 
application of the modern system or in the method 
of the individual teacher. These may to a great 
extent be done away with by a proper understand- 
ing of conditions, a just estimate of what may be 
accomplished, and a wise choice of the means of 
doing this. Teachers must take things as they find 
them, but the ultimate result of work depends to 
a great extent upon how they take them. If they 
must often accept unfortunate conditions, they may 
at least reduce to a minimum whatever is uneffect- 
ive in their own method. 

The most serious defects which depend largely 
upon individual teaching are four. The first is the 
danger, already alluded to, of teaching children 



40 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

about literature ; the second is that of making too 
great a demand upon the child ; the third is the 
common habit of endeavoring to reach the enthu- 
siasm of the pupil through the reason, instead of 
aiming at the reason through the enthusiasm ; and 
the fourth is — to speak boldly — the possible inca- 
pacity of the teacher for this particular work. 

The first of these is the most widespread. It is 
so natural to bring forward facts concerning the 
history of writers and of books, it is indeed so im- 
possible to avoid this entirely ; to induce students 
to repeat glibly what some critic has written about 
authors and their works is so easy, that this insen- 
sibly and almost inevitably tends to make up the 
bulk of instruction. Every incompetent teacher 
takes refuge in such formal drill. The history of 
literature is concrete ; it is easily tabulated ; and 
it is naturally accepted by children as being ex- 
actly in line with the work which properly belongs 
to other studies with which they are acquainted. 
If a child is set to treat literature just as he has 
treated history or mathematics, the process will 
appeal to him as logical and easily to be mastered. 
He will find no incongruity in applying the same 
method to " Macbeth " and to the list of Presidents 
or to the multiplication-table; and however well or 
ill he succeed in memorizing what is given him, 
he will feel the ease of working in accustomed 
lines. Names and dates may be learned by rote, old 
entrance-paper questions are tangible things, and 
thus examinations come to mean annual offerings of 



OTHER OBSTACLES 41 

childish brains. To teach literature requires sym- 
pathy and imagination : the history of literature 
requires only perseverance. Much that in school 
reports is set down as the study of masterpieces is 
in reality only a mixture of courses in biography 
and history, more or less spiced with gossip. 

The second danger, that of making too great a 
demand upon the child, is one which, to some ex- 
tent, besets all school work to-day, but which seems 
to be especially great and especially disastrous in 
the case of the study we are considering. Often 
the nature of the questions asked shows one form 
of this demand in a way that is nothing less than 
preposterous. Children in secondary schools are 
required to have original ideas in regard to the 
character of Lady Macbeth ; to define the work- 
ings of the mind of Shylock ; to produce personal 
opinions in the discussion of the madness of 
Hamlet. Children whose highest acquirements 
in English composition do not and cannot reach 
beyond the plainest expository statement of sim- 
ple facts and ideas, are coolly requested to dis- 
criminate between the style of " II Penseroso " 
and that of " L'Allegro," and to show how each 
is adapted to the purpose of the poet. If they 
were allowed to write from the point of view of a 
child, the matter would be bad enough ; but no 
teacher who sets such a task would be satisfied 
with anything properly belonging to the child- 
mind. It is probably safe to be tolerably certain 
that no teacher ever gave out this sort of a ques- 



42 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

tion who could without cribbing from the critics 
perform satisfactorily the task laid upon the un- 
fortunate children. 

I have before me a pamphlet entitled " Sugges- 
tions for Teachers of English Classics in the High 
Schools." It is not a gracious task to find fault 
with a fellow worker and a fellow writer in the 
same line in which I am myself offering sugges- 
tions, and I therefore simply put it to the com- 
mon sense of teachers what the effect upon the 
average high school pupil would be if he were 
confronted with questions such as are included in 
the proposed outline for the study of "Evangeline." 
The author of the pamphlet directs that these 
points are to be used " after some power of analy- 
sis has been developed." 

The language. 

Relative proportion of English and Latin. 

Archaic element, proportion and use. 

Weight of the style ; presentative and symbolic 

words. 
Emotional element ; experimental significance of 

terms. 
Picture-element ; prevailing character of figures 
of speech. 
The structure. 
Grammatical. 

Poetic uses of words ; archaisms, poetic forms. 
Poetic uses of parts of speech, parse. 1 
Poetic constructions and inversions, analyze. 

1 I am unable to resist the temptation to call attention to the 
intimation that the writer perceives some relation between poetry 
and parsing. It would be interesting if he had developed this. 



OTHER OBSTACLES 43 

Metrical. 

Number and character of metrical " feet." 

Accent and quantity, the spondee. 

Scan selected lines, compare with classic hexa- 
meter. 

Compare hexameter with other verse-forms. 

Character of rhyme, compare with other poems. 

Presence and use of alliteration. 
Musical. 

Examine for lightness and speed ; trochee, dactyl, 
polysyllables. 

Examine for dignity ; iambus, monosyllables. 

Number of syllables in individual lines. 

Character of consonants ; stopped, unstopped, 
voiced. 

Character of vowels ; back, front, round, harsh. 

Correspondence of sound to sense. 

It would be interesting, and perhaps somewhat 
humiliating, for each one of us who are teachers 
to take a list of the questions we have set for ex- 
aminations in literature and with perfect honesty 
tell ourselves how many of them we could our- 
selves answer with any originality, and how many 
it is fair to suppose that our students could write 
about with any ideas except those gathered from 
teacher or text-book. "With the pressure of a 
doubtful system and of unintelligent custom always 
upon us, few of us, it is to be feared, would escape 
without a sore conscience. 

When I speak of a school-boy or a school-girl as 
writing with " originality," I do not mean any- 
thing profound. I am not so deluded as to suppose 



44 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

this originality will take the form of startlingly 
novel discoveries in regard to the significance of 
work or the intention of authors. I only mean 
that what the boy or girl writes shall be written 
because he or she really thinks it, and that each 
idea, no matter if it be obvious and crude, shall 
have some trace of individuality which will indi- 
cate that it has passed through the mind of the 
particular pupil who expresses it. This, I believe, 
is what should chiefly concern the maker of exam- 
ination-papers. He should especially aim at giving 
students an opportunity of showing personal opin- 
ions and convictions. 

No one who has looked over files of examination- 
papers is likely to deny that we are most of us 
likely to be betrayed into asking of our classes ab- 
surd things in the line of criticism. It is all very 
well to remember the scriptural phrase about the 
high character of some of the utterances of babes 
and sucklings ; but this is hardly sufficient war- 
rant for insisting that our school-children shall 
babble in philosophy and chatter in criticism. 
The honest truth is that we are constantly de- 
manding of pupils things that we could for the 
most part do but very poorly ourselves. The un- 
fortunate youngsters who should be solacing them- 
selves with fairy-tales or with stories of adventure 
as their taste happens to be, are being dragged 
through "The Vicar of Wakefield," — an exqui- 
site book, which I doubt if one person in fifty can 
read to-day with proper appreciation and delight 



OTHER OBSTACLES 45 

until he is at least twenty-five. They are being 
asked to write themes about Lady Macbeth, — 
and if they were really frank, and wrote their 
own real thoughts, if they considered her from 
the point of view of the children they are, where is 
the teacher who woidd not feel obliged to return the 
theme as a failure ? Those instructors who recog- 
nized that it was of real worth because genuine 
would also realize that it would be impossible when 
tried by the modern standard of examinations. 

How far individual teachers go in demanding 
from children what the youthful mind cannot be 
fairly expected to give will depend upon the per- 
sonal equation of the instructor. In too many 
cases the entrance-examinations set a standard 
which in the fitting-schools may not safely be 
ignored, but which is fatal to all original thinking. 
Perhaps the worst form of this is the wrenching 
from the student what are supposed to be criti- 
cisms upon artistic form or content. A hint of the 
teaching which is intended to lead up to this has 
been given in the topics suggested in connection 
with the study of " Evangeline " on page 42. The 
" outline " from which those are quoted goes on to 
give the following questions : 

Of what literary spirit is " Evangeline " the expression ? 

What is the author's thought-habit as shown in the 
poem ? 

What is the place of this poem in the development of 
verse ? 

I am perhaps a little uncharitable to these queries 



46 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

because I am, I confess, entirely unable to answer 
them myself ; but I am also sure that no child in 
the stage of mental development belonging to the 
secondary schools would have any clear and reason- 
able idea even of what they mean. The example 
is an extreme one, but it has more parallels than 
would seem possible. 

The formulation of views on aesthetics, whether 
in regard to workmanship or to motive, is utterly 
beyond the range of any mental condition the 
teacher in secondary schools has a right to assume 
or to expect. All that can happen is that the student 
who is asked to answer aesthetic conundrums will 
reproduce, in form more or less distorted according 
to the parrot-like fidelity of his memory, views he 
has heard without understanding them. Any 
teacher of common sense knows this, and any teacher 
of independent mind will refuse to be bullied by 
manuals or by entrance-examination papers into in- 
flicting tasks of this sort upon his pupils. 

In any branch many students either go on blun- 
deringly or fail altogether through sheer ignorance 
of how to study. In the case of literature perhaps 
more fail through this cause than through all others 
combined. A robust, honest, and not unintelli- 
gent lad, who is fairly well disposed toward school 
work, but whose real interests are in outdoor life 
and active sport, who is intellectually interested 
only in the obviously practical side of know- 
ledge, is set down to " study " a play of Shake- 
speare's. He is disposed to do it well, if not 



OTHER OBSTACLES 47 

from any vital interest in the matter, at least 
from a general habit of being faithful in his 
work and a healthful instinct to do a thing 
thoroughly if he undertakes it at all. He is at the 
outset puzzled to know what is expected of him. 
In arithmetic or algebra he has had definite tasks, 
and success has been in direct proportion to the 
diligence with which he has followed a course 
definitely marked out. Now he casts about for 
a rule of procedure. He can understand that he is 
expected to learn the meaning of unusual or obso- 
lete words, that he is to make himself acquainted 
with the story so that he may be able to answer 
any of the conundrums which adorn ingeniously 
the puzzle department of examination papers. 
These things he does, but he is too sensible not to 
know that if this is all there is to the study of liter- 
ature the game is not worth the candle. He cannot 
help feeling that the time thus employed might be 
put to a better use ; he is probably bored ; and as 
he is sure to know that he is bored, he is likely to 
conceive a contempt for literature which is none 
the less deep and none the less permanent for not 
being put into words. He very likely comes to be- 
lieve, with the inevitable tendency of youth to 
make its own feelings the criteria by which to judge 
all the world, that everybody is really bored by 
literature, if only, for some inscrutable reason, 
people did not feel it necessary to shroud the mat- 
ter in so much humbug. Talk about the beauty of 
Shakespeare, about the greatness of his poetry, the 



48 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

wonders of literary art, come to affect hirn as cant 
pure and simple. He puts this to himself plainly 
or not according to his temperament ; but the feel- 
ing is in his mind, showing at every turn to one 
wise enough to discern. Now and then a boy is 
born with the taste and appreciation of poetry, and 
of course even in these days, when a literary atmo- 
sphere in the home is unhappily so rare, an oc- 
casional student appears from time to time who 
has been taught to care for poetry where every 
child should learn to love it, in the nursery. On 
the whole, however, the average school-boy really 
cares little or nothing for literature, and in his 
secret heart is entirely convinced that nobody else 
cares either. 

Not knowing how to " study " literature, then, and 
feeling that in literature is nothing to study which 
is of consequence, the pupil is in no position to 
make even a reasonable beginning. He cannot 
even approach literature in any proper attitude 
unless he can be made to care for it ; unless he 
can be so interested that he ceases to feel the 
profession of admiration for the Shakespeare he 
is asked to work upon to be necessarily cant and 
affectation. Perhaps the hardest part of the task 
set before the teacher is to bring the pupil into 
a frame of mind where he can properly study poetry 
and to give him some insight into what such 
study may and should mean. 

How this is to be accomplished I cannot pretend 
fully to say. In speaking of what I may call 



OTHER OBSTACLES 49 

" inspirational " training in literature I shall try 
to answer the question to some extent ; and here 
I may at least point out that the situation is from 
the first utterly hopeless if the teacher is in the 
same state of mind as the pupil. If the instructor 
is able to see no method of studying literature 
other than mechanical drudgery over form, the 
looking-up of words, verification of dates, dis- 
section of plot, and so on, it is idle to hope that 
he will be able to aid the class to anything better 
than this dry-as-dust plodding. The teacher may 
at least learn what at its best the "study" is. 
He may or may not have the power of inciting 
those under him to enthusiasm, but he may at 
least show them that something is possible beyond 
the mechanical treatment of the masterpieces of 
art. 

A writer in the (Chicago) " Dial " states admir- 
ably the attitude of great masses of students in 
saying : 

There are many people, young people in particular, 
who, with the best will in the world, cannot understand 
why it is that men make such a fuss about literature, 
and who are honestly puzzled by the praises bestowed 
upon the great literary artists. They would like to join 
in sympathetic appreciation of the masters, and they 
have an abundant store of gratitude and reverence to 
lavish upon objects that approve themselves as worthy ; 
but just what there is in Shakespeare and Wordsworth 
and Tennyson to call for such seeming extravagance of 
eulogy remains a dark mystery. Such people are apt 
in their moments of revolt to set it all down to a sort 



50 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

of critical conspiracy, and to consider those who voice 
the conventional literary estimates as chargeable with 
an irritating kind of hypocrisy. They cannot see for 
the life of them why the books of the hour, with their 
timeliness, their cleverness, their sentimental or sensa- 
tional interest, should be held of no serious account by 
the real lovers of literature, while the dull babblers of 
a bygone age are exalted to the skies by these same de- 
votees of the art of letters. . . . Some young people 
never recover from the condition of open revolt into 
which they are thrown by the injudicious methods of 
our education. 

Out of his own experience and appreciation the 
teacher must be able to show the pupil some method 
of studying literature which shall in the measure 
of the student's individual capacity lead to a con- 
ception of what literature is and wherein lies its 
importance. Until this can be done, nothing has 
been effected which is of any real or lasting value. 
The third defect which I have mentioned I have 
put in a phrase which may at first seem somewhat 
cryptic. What is meant by the attempt to reach the 
enthusiasm of the child through the reason may not 
be at once apparent. Yet the thing is simple. It is 
not difficult to lead children to think, and to think 
deeply, of things which have touched their feeling. 
If once their emotions are aroused, they will go 
actively forward in every investigation of which 
their minds are capable, and with whatever degree 
of appreciation they are equal to. A child cannot, 
however, be reasoned into any vital admiration. 
The extent to which an adult is to be touched 



OTHER OBSTACLES 51 

emotionally by argument is extremely limited. 
Few travelers, for instance, are able really to 
respond when an officious verger or care-taker 
points out some historic spot, and after glibly re- 
lating some event in his professional patter, ends 
with a look which says almost more plainly than 
words: "Stand just here, and thrill! Sixpence 
a thrill, please." Yet this is very much what is 
expected of children. The teacher takes a famous 
book, laboriously recounts its merits, its fame, its 
beauties, and then tacitly commands the children : 
" Think of that, and thrill ! One credit for every 
thrill." It is true that the verger demands a fee 
and the teacher promises a reward, but the result 
is the same. Do the children thrill? Is there a 
conscientious teacher who has tried this method 
who has not with bitter disappointment realized 
that the students have come out of the course with 
nothing save a few poor facts and disfigured conven- 
tional opinions which they reserve for examina- 
tions as they might save battered pennies for the 
contribution-box ? They have been personally con- 
ducted through a course of literature. They come 
out of it in much the same condition as return 
home the personally conducted through foreign 
art-galleries who say : " Yes, I must have seen the 
4 Mona Lisa,' if it 's in the Louvre. I saw all the 
pictures there, you know." The chief difference is 
that children are generally incapable, outside of 
examination-papers, of pretending an enthusiasm 
which they do not feel. 



52 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

One thing which is indisputable is that children 
know when they are bored. Many adults become 
so proficient in the art of self-deception as to be 
able to cheat themselves into thinking they are at 
the height of enjoyment because they are doing 
what they consider to be the proper thing ; when 
in simple truth their only pleasure must lie in the 
gratification of a futile vanity. Of children this is 
seldom true ; or, if it is true, it extends only to the 
fictions practiced by their own childish world. If 
they have conventions, these differ from the conven- 
tions of their elders, and they do not fool themselves 
with a show of enjoyment when the reality is want- 
ing. If they are wearied by a book, the fact that it 
is a masterpiece does not in the least console them. 
They may be forced by teachers to read or to study 
it, and to say on examination-papers that it is beauti- 
ful; yet they not only know they are not pleased, 
but to each other they are generally ready to ac- 
knowledge it with perfect frankness. 

The need of saying this in the present connection 
is that it is not possible really to convince children 
they are enjoying the writing of themes about Mrs. 
Primrose, or about Silas Marner and Effie, or on 
the character of Lady Macbeth, unless they are 
vitally interested. I am far from being so modern 
as to think that pupils should not be asked to do 
anything which they do not wish to do ; but I am 
radical enough to believe that no other good which 
may be accomplished by the study of literature in any 
other way can compensate for making good books 






OTHER OBSTACLES 53 

wearisome. The idea that literature is something 
to be vaguely respected but not to be read for en- 
joyment is already sufficiently prevalent ; and rather 
than see it more widespread, I would have all the 
so-called teaching of literature in the secondary 
schools abolished altogether. 

The last point which I mentioned as likely to 
diminish the value of teaching is that it so often 
demands of teachers more than can be surely or 
safely counted on in the way of fitness. This I do 
not mean to dwell upon, nor is it my purpose to 
draw up a bill of arraignment against my craft. I 
wish simply to comment that one essential, a prime 
essential, in the teaching of literature is the power 
of imaginative enthusiasm on the part of the 
teacher. This would be recognized if the subject 
of instruction were any other of the fine arts. If 
teachers were required to train school-children in 
the symphonies of Beethoven or in the pictures of 
Titian, everybody would realize that some special 
aptitude on the part of the instructor was requisite. 
Every normal school or college graduate is set to 
teach the masterpieces of Shakespeare or of Milton, 
and the fact that the poetry is as completely a 
work of art as is symphony or picture, and that 
what holds true of one as the product of artistic 
imagination must hold true of the other, is quietly 
and even unconsciously ignored. 

No amount of study will create in a teacher the 
artistic imagination in its highest sense, although 
much may be done in the way of developing artistic 



54 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

perception; but at least self -improvement may 
go far in the nourishing of the important quality 
of self-honesty. An instructor must learn to deal 
fairly with himself. He must be strong enough to 
acknowledge to himself fearlessly if he is not able 
to care for some work that is ranked as an artistic 
masterpiece. He must be willing to say unflinch- 
ingly to himself that he cannot do justice to this 
work or to that, because he is not in sympathy with 
it, or because he lacks any experience which would 
give him a key to its mood and meaning. 

One thing seems to me to be entirely above dis- 
pute in this delicate inquiry : that it is idle to hope 
to impart to children what we have not learned 
ourselves ; and it follows that the first necessity 
is to appreciate our shortcomings. I ask only for 
the same sort of honesty which would by common 
consent be essential in teaching the more humble 
branches. A teacher who could not solve quadratic 
equations would manifestly be an ill instructor in 
algebra. By the same token it is evident that a 
teacher who cannot enter into the heart of a poem, 
who does not understand the mood of a play, who 
has not a real enthusiasm for literature, is not fitted 
to help children to a comprehension and an appre- 
ciation of these. Neither is the power to rehearse 
the praises and phrases of critics or commenta- 
tors a sufficient qualification for teaching. In an 
examination-paper at the Institute of Technology 
a boy recently wrote with admirable frankness and 
directness : 



OTHER OBSTACLES 55 

I confess that while I like Shakespeare, I like other 
poets better, and while my teachers have told me that 
he was the greatest writer, they never seemed to know 
why. 

The boy unconsciously implies a most important 
fact, namely, that if a teacher does not know why 
a poet is great, it is not only difficult to convince 
the pupil of the reality of his claims, but also is it 
impossible to disguise from the clever scholars the 
real ignorance of the instructor. As well try to 
warm children by a description of a fire as to en- 
deavor to awake in them admiration and pleasure by 
parrot-phrases, no matter how glibly or effectively 
repeated. They are aroused only by the contagion 
of genuine feeling ; they are moved only by finding- 
that the teacher is first genuinely moved himself. 

It is bad enough when an instructor repeats 
unemotionally what he has unemotionally acquired 
about arithmetic or geography. Pupils will receive 
mechanically whatever is mechanically imparted ; 
and in even the most purely intellectual branches 
such training can at best only distend the mind of 
the child without nourishing it. When it comes 
to a study which is presented as of value precisely 
because it kindles feeling, the absurdity becomes 
nothing less than monstrous. 

Any child of ordinary intelligence comes sooner 
or later to perceive, whether he reasons it out or 
not, that much of the literature presented to him 
is not in the least worth the bother of study if it is 
to be taken merely on its face-value. If " The 



56 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

Vicar of Wakefield " or " Silas Marner " is to be 
read simply for the plot, either book might be swept 
out of existence to-morrow and the world be little 
poorer. A conscientious teacher will at least be 
honest with himself in determining how much more 
than the obvious and often slight face-value he is 
enabling his class to perceive. 

An ordinary modern school-boy unconsciously 
but inevitably measures the values of the books 
presented to him by the news of the day and the 
facts of life as he sees it. If he is not made to 
feel that books represent something more than 
a statement of outward fact or of fiction, he is too 
clear-headed not to see that they are of little real 
worth, and with the pitiless candor of youth he is 
too honest not to acknowledge this to himself. 
Young people are apt to credit their elders with 
enormous power of pretending. The conventional- 
ities of life, those arrangements which adults re- 
cognize as necessary to the comfort and even to 
the continuance of society, are not infrequently re- 
garded by the young as rank hypocrisy. The same 
is true of any tastes which they cannot share. 
Again and again I have come upon the feeling 
among students that the respect for literature pro- 
fessed by their elders was only one of the many 
shams of which adult life appears to children to 
be so largely made up. 

From the purely intellectual side of the matter, 
moreover, the youth is right in feeling that there is 
nothing so remarkable in play or poem as to jus- 



OTHER OBSTACLES 57 

tify the enthusiasm which he is told he should feel. 
If he sees only what I have called the face-value, he 
would be a dunce if he did not imagine an absurd- 
ity in the estimate at which the works of great 
artists are held. He is precisely in the position of 
the man who judges the great painting by its real- 
istic fidelity to details, and logically, from his point 
of view, ranks a well-defined photograph above 
"The Night Watch" or the Dresden "Madonna." 
There is more thrill and more emotion for the boy 
in the poorest newspaper account of a game of 
football than in the greatest play of Shakespeare's, 
— unless the lad has really got into the spirit of 
the poetry. 

If nothing is to be taken into account but the 
intellectual content of literature, the child is there- 
fore perfectly right, and doubly so from his own 
point of view. Regarded as a mere statement of 
fact it is to be expected that the average modern 
boy will find " Macbeth " far less exciting and ab- 
sorbing than an account of a football match or of 
President Roosevelt's spectacular hunting. If we 
expect the lad to believe without contention and 
without mental reservation that the work of liter- 
ature is really of more importance and interest than 
these articles of the newspaper or the magazine, 
we are forced to depend upon the qualities which 
distinguish poetry as art. If books are to be used 
only as glove-stretchers to expand mechanically the 
minds of the young, it is better to throw aside the 
works of the masters, and to come down frankly 



58 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

to able expositions of literal fact, stirring and ab- 
sorbing. 

It must be always borne in mind, moreover, that 
little permanent result is produced except by wbat 
the pupil does for himself. The teacher is there to 
encourage, to stimulate, to direct ; but the real 
work is done in the brain of the student. This 
limits what may wisely be attempted in the line 
of instruction. What the teacher is able to lead 
the pupil to discover or to think out for himself 
is within the limit of sound and valuable work. 
With every class, and — what makes the problem 
much more difficult — with every boy or girl in 
the class, the capacity will vary. The signs, more- 
over, by which we determine how far a child is 
thinking for himself, instead of more or less con- 
sciously mimicking the mind of the master, are all 
well-nigh intangible, and must be watched for 
with the nicest discernment. Often the teacher is 
obliged to help the class or the individual as we 
help little children playing at guessing-games with 
" Now you are hot," or " Now you are cold ; " but 
just as the game is a failure if the child has in the 
end to be told outright the answer to the conundrum, 
so the instruction is a failure if the student does not 
make his own discovery of the meaning and worth 
of poem or play. The moment the instructor finds 
himself forced to do the thinking for his class in 
any branch of study, he may be sure that he has 
overstepped the boundary of real work, or at least 
that he has been going too rapidly for his pupils 



OTHER OBSTACLES 59 

to keep pace with him. This is even likely to be 
true when he is obliged to do the phrasing, the 
putting of the thought into word. He cannot pro- 
fitably go farther at that time. In another way, 
at another time, he may be able to bring the class 
over the difficulty ; but he is doing them an injury 
and not a benefit, if he go on to do for them the 
thinking, or that realizing of thought which be- 
longs to putting thought into word. He is then 
not educating, but " cramming." It is his duty to 
encourage, to assist, but never to do himself what 
to be of value must be the actual work of the 
learner himself. 

All this is evident enough in those branches 
where results are definite and concrete, like the 
learning of the multiplication-table or of the facts 
of geography. It is equally true in subjects where 
reasoning is essential, like algebra or syntax. Most 
of all, if not most evidently, is it vitally true in 
any connection where are involved the feelings and 
anything of the nature of appreciation of artistic 
values. We evidently cannot do the children's mem- 
orizing for them; but no more can we do for them 
their reasoning; and least of all is it possible to 
manufacture for them their likings and their dis- 
likings, their appreciations and their enthusiasms. 
To tell children what feelings they should have over 
a given piece of literature produces about the same 
effect as an adjuration to stop growing so fast or 
a request that they change the color of their eyes. 

In any emotional as in any intellectual experience, 



60 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

intensity and completeness must ultimately depend 
upon the capacity and the temperament of the in- 
dividual concerned. It is useless to hope that a dull, 
stolid, unimaginative boy will have either the same 
appreciation or the same enjoyment of art as his 
fellow of fine organization and sensitive tempera- 
ment. The personal limitation must be accepted, 
just as is accepted the impossibility of making some 
youths proficient in geometry or physics. It may be 
necessary under our present system — and if so the 
fact is not to the credit of existing conditions — to 
present the dull pupil with a set of ideas which he 
may use in examinations. The proceeding would be 
not unlike providing the dead with an obolus by 
way of fare across the Styx; and certainly in no 
proper sense could be considered education. Diffi- 
cult as it may be, the pupil must be made to think 
and to feel for himself, or the work is naught. 

Perhaps the tendency to try to do for the student 
what he should accomplish for himself is the most 
general and the most serious of all the errors into 
which teachers are likely to fall. The temptation is 
so great, however, and the conditions so favorable 
to this sort of mistake, that it is not possible to 
mete out to instructors who fall into it an amount 
of blame at all equal to the gravity of the offense. 



FOUNDATIONS OF WOEK. 

The foundation of any understanding or appre- 
ciation of literature is manifestly the power of read- 
ing it intelligently. A truth so obvious might seem 
to be taken for granted and to need no saying ; but 
any one who has dealt with entrance examination- 
papers is aware how many students get to the close 
of their fitting-school life without having acquired 
the power of reading with anything even approach- 
ing intelligence. Primary as it may sound, I can- 
not help emphasizing as the foundation of all study 
of literature the training of students in reading, 
pure and simple. 

The practical value of simple reading aloud seems 
to me to have been too often overlooked by teachers 
of literature. Teachers read to their pupils, and 
this is or should be of great importance ; but the 
thing of which I am now speaking is the reading 
of the students to the teacher and to the class. In 
the first place a student cannot read aloud without 
making evident the degree of his intelligent com- 
prehension of what he is reading. He must show 
how much he understands and how he understands 
it. 

The queer freaks in misinterpretation which come 



62 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

out in the reading of pupils are often discouraging 
enough, but they are amusing and enlightening. 
Any teacher can furnish absurd illustrations, and 
it is not safe to assume of even apparently simple 
passages that the child understands them until he 
has proved it by intelligent reading aloud. The 
attention which oral reading is at present receiving 
is one of the encouraging signs of the times, and 
cannot but do much to forward the work of the 
teacher of literature. 

Of so much importance is it, however, that the 
first impression of a class be good, that the in- 
structor must be sure either to find a reasonably 
good reader among the pupils for the first rendering 
or must give it himself. In plays this is hardly wise 
or practicable ; but here the parts are easily assigned 
beforehand, and the pride of the students made 
a help in securing good results. In any work a class 
should be made to understand that the first thing 
to do in studying a piece of literature is to learn to 
read it aloud intelligently and as if it were the 
personal utterance of the reader. 

In dealing with a class it is often a saving of 
time and an easy method of avoiding the effects 
of individual shyness to have the pupils read in con- 
cert. In dealing with short pieces of verse this is, 
moreover, a means of getting all the class into the 
spirit of the piece. The method lacks, of course, 
in nicety; but it is in many cases practically 
serviceable. 

Above everything the teacher must be sure, be- 



FOUNDATIONS OF WORK 63 

fore any attempt is made to do anything further, 
that the pupil has a clear understanding at least 
of the language of what he reads. My own ex- 
perience with boys who come from secondary 
schools even of good grade has shown me that they 
not infrequently display an extraordinary incap- 
ability of getting from the sentences and phrases 
of literature the most plain and obvious meaning, 
especially in the case of verse ; while as to unusual 
expressions they are constantly at sea. On a recent 
entrance examination-paper I had put, as a test of 
this very power, the lines from " Macbeth : " 

And with some sweet oblivious antidote 
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff. 

The play is one which they had studied carefully 
at school, and they were asked to explain the force 
in these lines of " oblivious." Here are some of 
the replies : 

"Oblivious," used in this quotation, means that the 
person speaking was not particular as to the kind of 
antidote that was chosen. 

A remedy that would not expose the lady to public 
suspicion. 

The word " oblivious " implies a soothing cure, which 
will heal without arousing the senses. 

An antidote applied in a forgetful way, or unknown 
to the person. 

" Oblivious " here means some antidote that would 
put Lady Macbeth to sleep while the doctor removed 
the cause of the trouble. 

" Oblivious antidote " means one that is very pleasing. 

The word " oblivious " is beautifully used here. 



64 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

Macbeth wishes the doctor to administer to Lady Mac- 
beth some antidote which will cure her of her fatal \_sic] 
illness, but which will not at all be any bitter medicine. 

" Oblivious " here means relieving. 

" Oblivious " means some remedy the doctor had for- 
gotten, but might remember if he thought hard enough. 

Of course many of the replies were sensible and 
sound, but those hardly better than these were dis- 
couragingly numerous. 

In my own second-year work, in which the 
students have had all the fitting-school training 
and the freshman drill besides, I am not infre- 
quently confounded by the inability of students to 
understand the meaning of words which one uses 
as a matter of course. The statement that Raleigh 
secretly married a Lady in Waiting, for instance, 
reappeared in a note-book in the assertion that Sir 
Walter ran away with Queen Elizabeth's waiting- 
maid ; and a remark about something which took 
place at Holland House brought out the unbeliev- 
able perversion that the event happened "in 
a Dutch tavern." Personally I have never dis- 
covered how far beyond words of one syllable a 
lecturer to students may safely go in any assurance 
that his language will be understood by all the 
members of his class ; but this is one of the things 
which must be decided if teaching is to be effective. 

It must always be remembered that the vocab- 
ulary of literature is to some extent different from 
that employed in the ordinary business of life. 
The student is confronted with a set of terms which 



FOUNDATIONS OF WORK 65 

he seldom or never uses in common speech ; he must 
learn to appreciate fine distinctions in the use of 
language ; he must receive from words a precision 
and a force of meaning, a richness of suggestion, 
which is to be appreciated only by special and spe- 
cific training. It will be instructive for the teacher 
to take any ordinary high-school class, for instance, 
and examine how far each member gets a complete 
and lucid notion of what Burke meant in the open- 
ing sentence of the " Speech on Conciliation : " 

I hope, Sir, that notwithstanding the austerity of the 
Chair, your good nature will incline you to some degree 
of indulgence toward human frailty. 
An instructor is apt to assume that the intent of 
a passage such as this is entirely clear, yet I ap- 
prehend that not one high-school pupil in twenty- 
gets the real force of this unaided. 

If this example seems in its diction too remote 
from every-day speech to be a fair example, the 
teacher may try the experiment with the sentence 
in " Books " in which Emerson speaks of volumes 
that are 

So medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authori- 
tative. 

Every word is of common, habitual use, but most 
young people would be well-nigh helpless when con- 
fronted with them in this passage. 

The use in literature of allusion, of figures, of 
striking and unusual employment of words, must be- 
come familiar to the student before he is in a con- 
dition to deal with literature easily and with full 



66 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

intelligence. The process must be almost like that 
of learning to read in a foreign tongue. For a 
teacher to ignore this fact is to take the position of 
a professor in Italian or Spanish who begins the 
reading of his pupils not with words and simple 
sentences, but with intricate prose and verse. 

It must be remembered, moreover, that if the 
diction of literature is removed from the daily ex- 
perience of the pupil, the ideas and the sentiments 
of literature are yet more widely apart from it. 
Literature must deal largely with abstract thoughts 
and ideas, expressed or implied ; it is necessarily 
concerned with sentiments more elevated or more 
profound than those with which life makes the 
young familiar. They must be educated to take the 
point of view of the author, to rise to the mental 
plane of a great writer as far as they are capable 
of so doing. Until they can in some measure ac- 
complish this, they are not even capable of reading 
the literature they are supposed to study. 

Fortunately it is with reading literature as it is 
with reading foreign tongues. Often the context, 
the general tone, the spirit, will carry us over pass- 
ages in which there is much that is not clear to 
our exact knowledge. Children are constantly able 
to get from a story or a poem much more than 
would seem possible to their ignorance of the lan- 
guage of literature. They are helped by truth to 
life even when they are far from realizing what 
they are receiving ; so that it would be manifestly 
unjust to assume that the measure of a child's profit 



FOUNDATIONS OF WORK 67 

in a given case is to be gauged too nicely by his 
acquaintance with the words, the phrases, the 
tropes, the suggestions in which the author has 
conveyed it. The fact remains, however, that in 
attempting to do anything effective in the way of 
instruction the teacher has first of all to train his 
pupil in the language of literature. 

The student, having learned to read the work 
which is to be studied, must approach it through 
some personal experience. The teacher who is en- 
deavoring to assist him must therefore discover what 
in the child's range of knowledge may best serve 
as a point of departure. In all education, no less 
than in formal argument, a start can be made only 
from a point of agreement, from something as evi- 
dent to the student as it is to the instructor. Con- 
sciously or unconsciously every teacher acts upon 
this principle, from the early lessons in addition 
which begin with the obvious agreement produced 
by the sight of the blocks or apples or beads which 
are before the child. In literature, too, the fact is 
commonly acted upon, if not so universally for- 
mulated. If young pupils are having " The Village 
Blacksmith " read to them, the teacher instinctively 
starts with the fact that they may have seen a black- 
smith at work at his forge. The difficulty is that 
teachers who naturally do this in simple poems fail 
to see that the same principle holds good of litera- 
ture of a higher order, and that the more complex 
the problem, the greater the need of being sure of 
this beginning with some actual experience. 



68 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

With this finding some safe and substantial 
foundation in the pupil's own experience is con- 
nected the necessity of speaking of literature, as of 
anything else one tries to teach, in the language of 
the class addressed. Of all that we say to our 
pupils very little if any of all our careful wisdom 
really impresses them or remains in their minds ex- 
cept that portion which we have managed to phrase 
in terms of their language and so to put that it 
appeals to emotions of their own young lives. They 
can have no conception of the characters in fiction 
or poetry except in so far as they are able to con- 
sider these shadows as moving in their own world. 
They should be told to make up their minds about 
Lady Macbeth, or Kobin Hood, or Dr. Primrose 
as if these were persons of their own community 
about whom they had learned the facts set forth in 
the books read. They cannot completely realize 
this, but they get hold of the fictitious character 
only so far as they are able to do it. They will 
at least come to have a conception that people they 
see in the flesh and those they meet in literature 
are of the same stuff fundamentally, and should be 
judged by the same laws. They will receive the 
benefit, moreover, whether they realize it or not, of 
being helped by fiction to understand real life, and 
they will be in the right way of judging books by 
experience. 

The principle of speaking to pupils only in the 
language of their own experience is of universal 
application, but it is to be applied with common 



FOUNDATIONS OF WORK 69 

sense. Nothing is more unfortunate in teaching 
than to have pupils feel that they are being talked 
down to or that too great an effort is being made 
to bring instruction to their level. A friend once 
told me of a professor who in the days of the 
first period of tennis enthusiasm in this country 
made so great an effort to take all his illustrations 
from the game that the class regarded the matter 
a standing joke. Yet if care be exercised it is not 
difficult to mix with the childish, the familiar, and 
the commonplace, the dignified, the unusual, and 
the suggestive. Starting with a daily experience 
the teacher may go on to states of the same emo- 
tion which are far greater and higher than can 
have come into the actual life of the child, but 
which are imaginatively intelligible and possible be- 
cause although they differ in degree they are the same 
in kind. Nothing is lost of the dignity of a play of 
Shakespeare's dealing with ambition if the teacher 
starts with ambition to be at the head of the 
school, to lead the baseball nine, or to excel in 
any sport ; but from this the child should be led 
on through whatever instances he may know in 
history, and in the end made to feel that the am- 
bition of Macbeth is an emotion he has felt, even 
though it is that emotion carried to its highest 
terms. So the small and the great are linked to- 
gether, and the use of the little does not appear 
undignified because it has been a stepping-stone to 
the great. 

The aim in teaching literature is to make it 



70 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

a part of the student's intimate and actual life ; a 
warm, human, personal matter, and not a thing 
taken up formally and laid aside as soon as out- 
side pressure is removed. To this end is the ap- 
peal made to the pupil's experience, and to this 
end is he allowed to make his own estimates, to 
formulate his own likes and dislikes. Any teacher, 
it must be remembered, is for the scholar in the 
position of a special pleader. The student regards 
it as part of the pedagogic duty to praise what- 
ever is taught, and instinctively distrusts commend- 
ation which he feels may be only formal and offi- 
cial. He forms his own opinion independently or 
from the judgment of his peers, — the conclusions 
of his classmates. He may repeat glibly for pur- 
poses of recitation or of examination the criticisms 
of the teacher, but he is likely to be little influ- 
enced by them unless they are confirmed by the 
voice of his fellows and his own taste. If young 
people do not reason this out, they are never unin- 
fluenced by it ; and this condition of things must 
be accepted by the teacher. 

It follows that it is practically never wise to 
praise a book beforehand. The proper position in 
presenting to the class any work for study is that 
it is something which the class are to read together 
with a view of discovering what it is like. Of 
course the teacher assumes that it has merit or it 
would not be taken up, but he also assumes that 
individually the members of the class may or may 
not care for it. The logical and safe method is to 



FOUNDATIONS OF WORK 71 

set the students to see if they can discover why- 
good judges have regarded the work as of merit. 
The teacher should say in effect : " I do not know 
whether you will care for this or not ; but I hope 
you will be able to see what there is in it to have 
made it notable." 

When the study of poem or play is practically 
over, when the pupils have done all that can be 
reasonably expected of them in the way of inde- 
pendent judgment, the teacher may show as many 
reasons for praising it as he feels the pupils will 
understand. He must, however, be honest in let- 
ting them like it or not. He must recognize that 
it is better for a lad honestly to be bored by every 
masterpiece of literature in existence than to stul- 
tify his mind by the reception of merely conven- 
tional opinions got by rote. 

Much the same thing might be said of the draw- 
ing of a moral, except that it is not easy to speak 
with patience of those often well-meaning but 
gravely mistaken pedagogues who seem bound to 
impress upon their scholars that literature is didac- 
tic. In so far as a book is deliberately didactic, it 
is not literature. It may be artistic in spite of its 
enforcing a deliberate lesson, but never because of 
this. My own instinct would be, and I am consist- 
ent enough to make it pretty generally my prac- 
tice, to conceal from a class as well as I can any 
deliberate drawing of morals into which a writer 
of genius may have fallen. It is like the fault of 
a friend, and is to be screened from the public as 



72 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

far as honesty will permit. Certainly it should 
never be paraded before the young, who will not 
reason about the matter, but are too wholesome by 
nature and too near to primitive human conditions 
not to distrust an offering of intellectual jelly 
which obviously contains a moral pill. 

Morals are as a rule drawn by teachers who feel 
that they must teach something, and something 
tangible. They themselves lack the conception of 
any office of art higher than moralizing, and they 
deal with literature accordingly. They are unable 
to appreciate the fact that the most effective influ- 
ence which can be brought to bear upon the hu- 
man mind is never the direct teaching of the 
preacher or the moralizer, but the indirect instruc- 
tion of events and emotions. Personally I have 
sufficient modesty, moreover, to make me hesitate 
to assume that I can judge better than a master 
artist how far it is well to go in drawing a moral. 
If the man of genius has chosen not to point to 
a deliberate lesson, I am far from feeling inclined 
to take the ground that I know better, and that the 
sermon should be there. When Shakespeare, or 
Coleridge, or Browning feels that a vivid tran- 
script of life should be left to work out its own 
effect, far from me be the presumption to consider 
the poet wrong, or to try to piece out his magni- 
ficent work with trite moralizing. 

The tendency to abuse children with morals is as 
vicious as it is widespread. It is perhaps not uncon- 
nected with the idea that instruction and improve- 



FOUNDATIONS OF WORK 73 

ment must alike come through means not in them- 
selves enjoyable. It is the principle upon which an 
old New England country wife rates the efficacy 
of a drug by its bitterness. We all find it hard to 
realize that as far as literature, at least, is con- 
cerned, the good it does is to be measured rather 
by the pleasure it gives. If the children entirely 
and intelligently delight in it, we need bother about 
no morals, we need — as far as the question of its 
value in the training of the child's mind goes — 
have no concern about examinations. Art is the 
ministry of joy, and literature is art or it is the 
most futile and foolish thing ever introduced into 
the training of the young. 



VI 

PRELIMINARY WORK 

It will not always do to plunge at once into a 
given piece of literature, for often a certain amount 
of preliminary work is needed to prepare the mind 
of the pupil to receive the effect intended by the 
author. For convenience I should divide the teach- 
ing of literature into four stages : 

Preliminary ; 

Inspirational ; 

Educational ; 

Examinational. 
The division is of course arbitrary, but it is after 
all one which comes naturally enough in actual 
work. One division will not infrequently pass into 
another, and no one could be so foolish as to sup- 
pose literature is to be taught by a cut and dried 
mechanical process of any sort. The division is 
convenient, however, at least for purposes of dis- 
cussion ; and no argument should be needed to 
prove that in many cases the pupil cannot even 
read intelligently the literature he is supposed to 
study until he has had some preparatory instruc- 
tion. 

The vocabulary of any particular work must 
first be taken into account. We do not ask a child 



PRELIMINARY WORK 75 

to read a poem until we suppose him to have by 
every-day use become familiar with the common 
words it contains. We should remember that the 
poet in writing has assumed that the reader is 
equally familiar with any less common words which 
may be used. It is certainly not to be held 
that the writer intends that in the middle of a 
flowing line or at a point where the emotion is at 
its highest, the reader shall be bothered by igno- 
rance of the meaning of a term ; that he shall be 
obliged to turn to notes to look up definitions, 
shall be plunged into a puddle of derivations, allied 
meanings, and parallel passages such as are so 
often prepared by the ingenious editors of school 
texts. These things are well enough in their place 
and way ; but no author ever intended his work 
to be read by any such process, and since litera- 
ture depends so largely on the production x>f a 
mood, such interruptions are nothing less than 
fatal to the effect. 

I remember as a boy sitting at the feet of an 
elder sister who was reading to me in English from 
a French text. At the very climax of the tale, 
when the heroine was being pursued down a wild 
ravine by a bandit, the reader came to an adjec- 
tive which she could not translate. With true 
New England conscientiousness she began to look 
it up in the dictionary; but I could not bear the 
delay. I caught the lexicon out of her hands, and 
without having even seen the French or knowing 
a syllable of that language, cried out : " Oh, I 



76 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

know that word ! It means ' blood-bolt ered.' Did 
lie catch her ? " She abandoned the search, and in 
all the horror of the picturesque Shakespearean 
epithet the bandit dashed on, to be encountered by 
the hero at the next turn of the romantic ravine. 
I had at the moment, so far as I can remember, 
no consideration of the exact truth of my state- 
ment. I simply could not bear that the emotion 
of the crisis should be interrupted by that bother- 
some search for an exact equivalent. The term 
6 blood-boltered ' fitted the situation admirably, 
and I thrust it in, so that we might hurry forward 
on the rushing current of excitement. This, as 
I understand it, is the fashion in which children 
should take literature. Few occasions, perhaps, 
are likely to call for epithets so lurid as that in 
which Macbeth described the ghost of Banquo, but 
the spirit of the thing read should so carry the 
reader forward that he cannot endure interruption. 
When work must be done with glossary and 
notes in order that the text may be easily and pro- 
perly understood, this should be taken as straight- 
forward preliminary study. It should be made as 
agreeable as possible, but agreeable for and in 
itself. When I say agreeable for itself, I mean 
without especial reference to the text for which 
preparation is being made. The history of words, 
the growth and modification of meanings, the pe- 
culiarities and relations of speech, may always be 
made attractive to an intelligent class ; and since 
here and throughout all study of literature students 



PRELIMINARY WORK 77 

are to be made to do as much of the actual work 
as possible, this part is simple. 

The amount of time given to such learning of the 
vocabulary might at first seem to be an objection 
to the method. In the first place, however, there 
is an actual economy of time in doing all this at 
first and at once, thus getting it out of the way, 
and saving the waste of constant interruptions in 
going over the text; in the second, it affords a 
means of making this portion of the work actually 
interesting in itself and valuable for its relation to 
the study of language in general ; and in the third 
place it both fixes meanings in mind and allows the 
reading of the author with some sense of the effect 
he designed to give by the words he employed. 

It is hardly necessary to say that in this matter 
of taking up the vocabulary beforehand many 
teachers, perhaps even most teachers, will not agree 
with me. The other side of the question is very 
well put in a leaflet by Miss Mary E. Litchfield, 
published by the New England Association of 
Teachers in English : 

My pupils, I find, can work longer and harder on 
" Macbeth " and " Hamlet," with constantly increasing 
interest, than on any other masterpieces suited to school 
use. Just because these dramas are so stimulating, the 
pupils have the patience to struggle with the difficulties of 
the text. In general they feel only a languid interest 
in word-puzzles such as delight the student of language ; 
for instance, the expression, " He does n't know a hawk 
from a handsaw," might fail to arouse their curiosity. 
But when Hamlet says : "I am but mad north-north 



78 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

west : when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from 
a handsaw," they are on the alert ; they really care to 
know what he means and why he has used this peculiar 
expression. Thus word-study which might be mere 
drudgery is rendered interesting by the human element 
in the play — the element which, in my opinion, should 
always be kept well in the foreground. 

A large number of teachers, many of them, very 
likely, of experience greater than mine, will agree 
with this view. I am not able to do so because I 
believe we should know the language before we try 
to read ; but I at least hold that the first principle 
in any successful teaching is that a teacher shall 
follow the method which he finds best adapted to 
his own temperament. For the instructor who is 
convinced that the habit of taking up difficulties 
of language as they are met in actual reading, to 
take them up then is perhaps the only effective 
way of doing things. It seems to me, however, 
a little like sacrificing the literature to a desire to 
make teaching the vocabulary easier. It is very 
likely a simpler way of arousing interest in diffi- 
culties of language ; but in teaching literature the 
elucidation of obscure words and phrases is of in- 
terest or value simply for the sake of the effect of 
the text, and I hold that to this effect, and to this 
effect as a whole, everything else should be subor- 
dinate. Each teacher must decide for himself what 
is the proper method, but I insist that no author 
ever wrote sincerely without assuming that his 
vocabulary was familiar to his audience beforehand. 



PRELIMINARY WORK 79 

Certainly I am not able to feel that it is wise to 
interrupt any first reading with anything save per- 
haps the briefest possible explanations, comments 
that are so short as not to break the flow of the 
work as a whole. 

The first reading of a narrative of any sort, it 
may surely be said, is chiefly a matter of making 
the reader, and especially the childish reader, ac- 
quainted with the story. Since little real study 
can be accomplished while interest is concentrated 
on the plot, it may be wise for the teacher to have 
a first reading without any more attention to 
the difficulties of vocabulary than is absolutely 
needed to make the story intelligible, and then to 
have the difficulties learned before a second and 
more intelligent going over of the work as a whole. 
Each teacher must decide a point of this sort accord- 
ing to individual judgment and the character of the 
class. 

In all the lower grades of school work whatever 
literature is given to the children should be in dic- 
tion and in phrasing so simple that very little of 
this sort of preliminary work need be done. So 
long as what is selected has real literary excellence 
it can hardly be too simple. We constantly forget, 
it seems to me, how simple is the world of children. 
Dr. John Brown, dear and wise soul, has justly 
said: 

Children are long in seeing, or at least in looking at 
what is above them ; they like the ground, and its 
flowers and stones, its " red sodgers " and lady-birds, and 



80 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

all its queer things ; their world is about three feet high, 
and they are more often stooping than gazing up. 

It does not follow that children are to be fed on 
that sort of water-gruel which is so often vended as 
"juvenile literature." They should be given the 
best, the work of real writers; but of this the 
simplest should be chosen, and in dealing with it 
the children should not be bothered with thoughts 
and ideas which are over their heads. They live, it 
must be remembered, in a " world about three feet 
high," mentally as well as physically. 

In preliminary work the first object is to remove 
whatever obstacles might hinder ease and smooth- 
ness of progress in reading. Beside having all ob- 
scure terms understood, it is well to call attention 
to some of the most striking and beautiful passages 
in the book or poem which is to be read. They 
should be taken up as detached quotations, and the 
pupils made to discover or to see how and why 
each is good. The pleasure of coming upon them 
when the text is read helps in itself ; it diminishes 
the strain upon the mind of the student in the 
effort of comprehension, and it doubles the effect 
of the portions chosen. My idea is that many fine 
passages may be treated almost as a part of the 
vocabulary of the text ; their meaning and force may 
be made so evident and so attractive that when the 
complete play or poem is taken up a knowledge of 
these bits helps greatly in securing a strong effect 
of the work as a whole. 

We teachers too often ignore, it is to be feared, 



PRELIMINARY WORK 81 

the strain it is to the young to understand and to 
feel at the same time. We fail to recognize, indeed, 
how difficult it is for them — or for any one — to 
feel while the attention is taxed to take in the 
meaning of a thing ; so that in literary study we 
are likely to demand the impossible, the respon- 
siveness of the emotions while all the force of the 
child's mind is concentrated upon the effort to 
comprehend. Whatever may he done legitimately 
to lessen this stress is most desirable. The prepar- 
ation of the vocabulary, the elucidation of obscure 
passages obviously aids in this; but so does the 
pointing out of beauties. Instead of being bothered 
in the midst of the effort to take in a poem or a 
play as a whole and being harassed by the need of 
mastering details of diction or phrasing, the student 
has a pleasant sense of self-confidence in coming 
upon obscure matters already conquered ; and in the 
same way receives both pleasure and a feeling of 
mastery in recognizing beauties already familiar. 

The preliminary work, besides this study of any 
difficulties of vocabulary, should include whatever 
is needful in making clear any difference between 
the point of view of the work studied and that of 
the child's ordinary life. 

In " The Merchant of Venice," for instance, it 
is necessary to make clear the fact that the play 
was written for an audience to which usury was an 
intolerable crime and a Jew a creature to be thor- 
oughly detested. The Jew-baiting of recent years 
in Europe helps to make this intelligible. The 



82 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

point must be made, because otherwise Antonio 
appears like a cad and Jessica inexcusable. The 
story is easily brought home to the school-boy, more- 
over, by its close relation to the simplest emotions. 

The two facts that Antonio has incurred the 
hatred of Shylock through his kindness to persons 
in trouble and that he comes within the range of 
danger through raising money to aid his friend 
Bassanio are so closely allied to universal human 
feelings and universal human experience that 
it is only needful to be sure these points are 
clearly perceived to have the sympathies of the class 
thoroughly awakened. All this is so obvious that 
it is hardly necessary to say it except for the sake of 
not omitting what is of so much real importance. 
Every teacher understands this and acts upon it. 

To include this in the preliminary work may 
seem a contradiction of a previous statement that 
it is not wise to tell children what they are expected 
to get from any given book. The two matters are 
entirely distinct. "What should be done is really 
that sort of giving of the point of view which we so 
commonly and so naturally exercise in telling an 
anecdote in conversation. " Of all conceited men 
I ever met," we say, " Tom Brandywine was the 
worst. Why, once I saw him " — and so on for the 
story which is thus declared to be an exposition of 
overweening vanity. " See," we say to the class in 
effect, " you must have felt sorry to see some 
kindly, honest fellow cheated just because he was 
too honest to suspect the sneak that cheated him. 



PRELIMINARY WORK 83 

Here is the story of a great, splendid, honest Moor, 
a noble general and a fine leader, who was utterly 
ruined and brought to his death in just that way." 
This is not drawing a moral, and it seems to me 
entirely legitimate aid to the student. It is less 
doing anything for them that they could and should 
do than it is directing them so that they may ad- 
vance more quickly and in the right direction. 

This indication of the general direction in which 
the mind should move in considering a work is 
closely connected with what might be called estab- 
lishing the proper point of departure. This is 
neither more nor less than fixing the fact of com- 
mon experience in the life of the pupil at which it 
seems safe and wise to begin. What has been said 
about the way in which a teacher calls upon the ex- 
perience of the pupils to bring home the picture of 
the Village Blacksmith at his forge is an indication 
of what is here meant. In teaching history to-day, 
with a somewhat older grade of pupils than would 
be reading that poem of Longfellow's, an instructor 
naturally makes vivid the Massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew by comparison with the reports of Jewish 
massacres in our own time ; and in the same line 
the fact that it is so short a time since the King of 
Servia was assassinated, or that the present Sultan 
of Turkey cemented on his crown with the blood of 
his brothers, may be made to assist a class to take 
the point of view necessary for the realization of 
the tragedy in " Macbeth." I have already spoken 1 



84 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

of the humbler, but perhaps even more vital way 
in which the vice of ambition that is so strong a 
motive power in that tragedy is to be understood 
by starting from the rivalry in sports, since from 
this so surely intelligible emotion the mind of the 
boy is easily led on to the ambition which burns to 
rule a kingdom. It is wise not to be afraid of the 
simple. If the poem to be studied is " The Ancient 
Mariner," it is well to discover what is the strangest 
situation in which any member of the class has ever 
found himself. After inciting the rest of the pupils 
to imagine what must be one's feelings in such 
circumstances, it is not difficult to lead them on 
to understand the declaration of Coleridge that he 
tried to show how a man would feel if the super- 
natural were actual. 

For natural, wholesome-minded children it is not 
in the least necessary to take pains to reconcile them 
to the supernatural. To the normal child the line 
between the actual and the unreal does not exist 
until this has been drilled into him by adult teach- 
ing, conscious or unconscious. The normal condition 
of youth is that which accepts a fairy as simply 
and as unquestioningly as it accepts a tree or a 
cow. Certainly it is true that children are in gen- 
eral ready enough for what they would call " make- 
believe," that stage of half -conscious self-deception 
which lies between the blessed imaginative faith of 
unsophisticated childhood and the more skeptical 
attitude of those who have discovered that " there 
is n't any Santa Claus." For all younger classes 



PRELIMINARY WORK 85 

nothing more is likely to be necessary than to 
assume that the wonderful will be accepted. 

When occasion arises to justify the marvellous, 
the teacher may always call attention to the fact that 
in poems like " The Ancient Mariner," or " Comus," 
or " Macbeth " the supernatural is a part of the 
hypothesis. To connect with this the pupil's con- 
ception of the part the hypothesis plays in a propo- 
sition in geometry is at once to help to connect one 
branch of study with another, always a desirable 
thing in education, and to aid them in understand- 
ing why and how they are to accept the wonders of 
the story entirely without question. The impossible 
is part of the proposition, and this they must be 
made to feel before they can be at ease with their 
author or get at all the proper point of view. 

The aim of literature is to arouse emotion, but 
we live in a realistic age, and the youth of the pre- 
sent is not given to the emotional. Youth, more- 
over, instinctively conceals feeling, and the lads in 
our school-classes to-day are in their outside lives 
and indeed in most of their school-work called upon 
to be as hard-headed and as unemotional as pos- 
sible. They are likely to feel that emotion is weak, 
that to be moved is effeminate. They will shy at 
any statement that they should feel what they 
read. The notion of conceiving an hypothesis 
helps just here. A boy will accept — not entirely 
reasoning the thing out, but really making of it an 
excuse to himself for being moved — the idea that 
if the hypothesis were true he might feel deeply, 



86 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

although he assures himself that as it is he is actu- 
ally stable in a manly indifference. The aim of the 
teacher is to awake feeling, but not to speak of it ; 
to touch the class as deeply as possible, yet not to 
seem aware, or at least not to show that he is aware 
that the students are touched. 

In this as in all treatment of literature, any 
connection with the actual life of the pupil is of 
the greatest value. It seems to justify emotion, 
and it gives to the work of imagination a certain 
solidity. Without reasoning the thing out fully, 
a boy of the present day is likely to judge the im- 
portance of anything presented to him at school 
by what he can see of its direct bearing upon his 
future work, and especially by its relations to the 
material side of life. This is even measurably true 
of children so young that they might be supposed 
still to be ignorant of the realism of the time and 
of the practical side of existence. The teacher best 
evades this danger by starting directly from some 
thought or fact in the child's present life and from 
this leading him on to the mood of the work of 
literature which is under consideration. 

Here and everywhere I feel the danger of seem- 
ing to be recommending mechanical processes for 
that which no mechanical process can reach. If 
the teacher has a sympathetic love for literature, 
he will understand that I do not and cannot mean 
anything of the sort ; if he has not that sympathy, 
he cannot treat literature otherwise than in a 
machine fashion, no matter what is said. It some- 



PRELIMINARY WORK 87 

times seems that it is hardly logical to expect every 
teacher to be an instructor in literature any more 
than it would be to ask every teacher to take classes 
in music and painting. Art requires not only know- 
ledge but temperament ; both master and pupil 
must have a responsiveness to the imaginative, or 
little can be accomplished. Since the exigencies of 
our present system, however, require that so large 
a proportion of teachers shall make the attempt, 
I am simply endeavoring to give practical hints 
which may aid in the work ; but I wish to keep 
plainly evident the fact that nowhere do I mean 
to imply a patent process, a mechanical method, or 
anything which is of value except as it is applied 
with a full comprehension that the chief thing, the 
thing to which any method is to be at need com- 
pletely sacrificed, is to awaken appreciation and 
enthusiasm, to quicken the imagination of the stu- 
dent, and to develop whatever natural powers he 
may have for the enjoying and the loving of good 
books. 1 

1 While this volume was in press a writer in the Monthly 
Review (London) has remarked : " I fail to see how a literary 
sense can be cultivated until a firm foundation of knowledge has 
been laid whereon to build, and I tremble to think of the result 
of an enforced diet of ' The Canterbury Tales,' ' The Faerie 
Queen,' and ' Marmion' upon a class as yet ignorant of the ele- 
ments of English composition." 



VII 

THE INSPIRATIONAL USE OF LITERATURE 

The term " inspirational," which I have used as 
indicating the second division of the teaching of 
literature, is a somewhat absurdly large word for 
what is the most simple and natural part of the 
whole dealing with books which goes on between 
teacher and pupil. It is a term, however, which 
expresses pretty well what is or should be the exact 
character of the study at its best. The chief effect 
of literature should be to inspire, and by " inspira- 
tional," as applied to teaching, I mean that pre- 
sentation of literature which best secures this end. 

Put in simpler terms the whole matter might 
be expressed by saying that the most important 
office of literature in the school as in life is to 
minister to delight and to enthusiasm ; and who- 
ever is familiar with the limited extent to which 
the required training in college requirements or in 
prescribed courses fulfils this office will realize the 
need which exists for the emphasizing of this view 
of the matter. Literature is made a gymnasium 
for the training of the intellect or a treadmill for 
the exercise of the memory, but it is too seldom 
that delight which it must be to accomplish its 
highest uses. 



INSPIRATIONAL USE OF LITERATURE 89 

That the secondary schools should be chiefly 
concerned with this phase of literature seems to me 
a truth so obvious and so indisputable that I can 
see only with astonishment that it is so generally 
ignored. In the lower grades, it is true, something 
is done in the way of letting children enjoy litera- 
ture without bothering about didactic meanings, 
history of authors, philological instances, critical 
manipulations, and all the devices with which later 
the masterpieces of genius are turned into bugbears ; 
but even here too many teachers feel an innate 
craving to draw morals and to make poetry in- 
structive. They seem to forget that as children 
themselves they skipped the moral when they read 
a story, or at best received it as an uninteresting 
necessity, like the core of an apple, to be discarded 
when from it had been gleaned all the sweets of 
the tale. Nothing is more amazing than the extent 
to which all we teachers, in varying degrees, but 
universally, even to the. best of us, go on dealing 
with a sort of imaginary child which from our own 
experience we know never did and never could 
exist. The first great secret of all teaching is to 
recognize that we must deal with our pupils as if 
we were dealing with our own selves at their age. 
If we can accomplish this, we shall not bore them 
with dull moralizings under the pretext that we are 
introducing them to the delights of literature. 

Where a class has to be dealt with, the work in 
any branch must be adapted to the average mind, 
and not to the understanding of the individual ; so 



90 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

that in school many things are impossible which 
at home, or in individual training, are not diffi- 
cult. It is not hard, I believe, to interest even the 
average modern boy, distracted by the multiplicity 
of current impressions, in the best literature, pro- 
vided he may be taken alone and competently 
handled. Almost any wholesome and sane lad may 
at times be found to be indifferent in class to the 
plays of Shakespeare, for instance ; yet I believe 
few healthy and fairly intelligent boys of from ten 
to fifteen could resist the fascination of the plays 
if these were read with them by a competent person 
at proper times, and without the dilution of mental 
perception which necessarily comes with the presence 
of classmates. Be this, however, as it may, the teach- 
er must be content with arousing as well as he can 
the spirit of the class as a whole. Some one or two 
of the cleverest pupils will lead, and may seem to 
represent the spirit of all ; but even they are not 
what they would be alone, and in any case the in- 
structor must not devote himself to the most clever 
while the rest of the pupils are neglected. 

It follows that in the choice of pieces to be read 
to students the first thing to be considered is that 
these shall be effective in a broad sense so that 
they will appeal to the average intelligence and 
taste of a given class easily and naturally. They 
must first of all have that strong appeal to general 
human emotion which will insure a ready response 
from youth not well developed aesthetically and 
rendered less sensitive by being massed with other 



INSPIRATIONAL USE OF LITERATURE 91 

students in a class. Such a selection is not easy, 
and it involves the careful study of what may be 
termed the individuality of any given group of 
pupils ; but it seems to me to be at once one of the 
most obvious and one of the most important of the 
points which should be considered in the beginning 
of any attempt to create in school a real enjoyment 
in literature. 

A danger which naturally presents itself at the 
very outset is the likelihood of forgetting that the 
possession of this easy and obvious interest is not 
a sufficient reason why a work should be presented 
to a class. It too often happens that the desire of 
arousing and interesting pupils leads teachers to 
bring forward things that are sensational and have 
little if any further recommendation. Doubtless 
Dr. Johnson was right when he declared that " you 
have done a great thing when you have brought a 
boy to have entertainment from a book; " yet after 
all the teacher is not advancing in his task and may 
be doing positive harm if he sacrifice too much to 
the desire to be instantly and strongly pleasing. 
Flashy and unworthy books are so pressed upon 
the reading public at the present day that especial 
care is needed to avoid fostering the tendency to 
receive them in place of literature. 

It is not my purpose to give lists of selections, 
for in the first place it has been done over and 
over, notably in such a collection as the admirable 
" Heart of Oak " series ; and in the second no se- 
lection can be held to be equally adapted to differ- 



92 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

ent classes or to have real value unless it has been 
made with a view to the actual needs of a definite 
body of pupils. Pupils must be interested, yet the 
things chosen to arouse their interest should be those 
which have not only the superficial qualities which 
make an instant appeal, but possess also those more 
lasting merits essential to genuine literature. 

In the lower grades it is generally, I believe, 
possible for the teacher to control the choice of 
selections put before students, although even here 
this is not always the case. If errors of selection 
are made, however, they are largely due to inability 
to judge wisely and to a too great deference to 
general literary taste. A teacher must remember 
that two points are absolutely essential to any good 
teaching of literature : first, that the selection be 
suited to the possibilities of the individual class ; 
second, that the teacher be qualified so to use and 
present the selection as to make it effective. Many 
conscientious teachers take poems which they know 
are regarded as of high merit, and which have been 
used with advantage by other instructors, yet which 
they individually, from temperament or from 
training, are utterly inadequate to handle. They 
either lack the insight and delight in the pieces 
which are essential if the pupils are to be kindled, 
or are deficient in power so to present their own 
appreciation and enjoyment that these appeal to 
the children. 

For illustration of one of the ways in which a 
child may be led into the heart of a poem I have 



INSPIRATIONAL USE OF LITERATURE 93 

chosen " The Tiger," by William Blake. This be- 
longs to the class of literature constantly taken 
for use with children because it is reputed to be 
beautiful, yet which constantly fails in its appeal 
to a class. It is to me one of the most wonderful 
lyrics in the language, yet I doubt if it would ever 
have occurred to me to use it in our common schools, 
and certainly I should never have dreamed that it 
was to be presented to children in the lower grades. 
I do not know with what success teachers in gen- 
eral may have used it, but in one or two Boston 
schools with which I happen to be fairly well ac- 
quainted the effect is pretty justly represented by 
the mental attitude of the small lad spoken of in 
the next chapter. The extent to which children 
acquiesce in a sort of mechanical compliance in 
what to them are the vagaries of their elders in 
the matter of literature can hardly be exaggerated. 
Doubtless they often unconsciously gain much of 
which they do not dream in the way of the devel- 
opment of taste and perception, but too often the 
whole of the instruction given along aesthetic lines 
slides over them without producing any permanent 
effect of appreciable value. 

Of course I do not contend that children are 
not advancing unless they know it. Early training 
in literature may often be of the highest value 
without definite consciousness on the part of the 
child. Self-analysis is no more to be expected here 
than anywhere else in the early stages of training. 
The child does not in the least comprehend, for 



94 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

instance, that the ditties of Mother Goose, mean- 
ingless jingles as they are, are educating his sense 
of rhythm ; he does not understand that his imag- 
inative powers are being nourished by the fairy- 
tale, the normal mental food for a certain stage of 
the development of the individual as it is the natural 
and inevitable product of a corresponding stage in 
the development of the race. So long as a child 
has genuine interest in a poem or a tale he is get- 
ting something from it, but he does not concern 
himself to consider anything beyond present enjoy- 
ment. In the earlier stages at least, and for that 
matter at any stage, the thing to be secured is in- 
terest ; and instruction in the lower school grades 
should be confined to what is actually needed to 
make children enjoy a given piece. Anything be- 
yond this may wisely be deferred. 

In many of the lower grades it is now the fashion 
to have children act out poems. The method is spo- 
ken of with satisfaction by teachers who have tried 
it. I know nothing of it by experience, but should 
suppose it might be good if not carried too far. 
Children are naturally histrionic, and advantage 
may be taken of this fact to stimulate their imagin- 
ation and to quicken their responsiveness to liter- 
ature, if seriousness and sincerity are not forgotten. 

In this early work it does not seem to me that 
much can wisely be done in the study of metrical 
effects. Indeed, I have serious doubts whether 
much in the way of the examination of the tech- 
nique of poetry properly has place anywhere in 



INSPIRATIONAL USE OF LITERATURE 95 

preparatory schools. The child, however, should be 
trained gradually to notice metrical effects, by hav- 
ing attention called to passages which are especially 
musical or impressive. By beginning with ringing 
and strongly marked verse and leading on to effects 
more delicate the teacher may do much in this line. 
I have called this early work "inspirational" 
because it should be directed to making literature 
a pleasure and an inspiration. The word, clumsy 
as it may seem, does express the real function of 
art, and the only function which may with any 
profit be considered in the earlier stages of the 
"study" of literature. The object is to make the 
children care for good books ; to show them that 
poetry has a meaning for them ; and to awaken in 
them — although they will be far from understand- 
ing the fact — a sensitiveness to ideals. The child 
will not be aware that he is being given higher 
views of life, that he is being trained to some per- 
ception of nobler aims and possibilities greater than 
are presented by common experiences ; but this is 
what is really being accomplished. Any training 
which opens the eyes to the finer side of life is in 
the best and truest sense inspiration ; and it should 
be the distinct aim of the teacher to see to it that 
whatever else may happen, in the lower grades or 
in the higher, this chief function of the teaching 
of literature shall not be lost sight of or neglected. 



VIII 

AN ILLUSTRATION 

To attempt to give a concrete illustration of the 
method in which any teaching is to be carried on 
is in a way to try for the impossible. Every class 
and every pupil must be treated according to the 
especial nature of the case and the personal equa- 
tion of the teacher. I perhaps expose myself to 
the danger of seeming egotistic if I insert here an 
experience of my own, and, what is of more conse- 
quence, I may possibly obscure the very points I am 
endeavoring to make clear. As well as I can, 
however, I shall set down an actual talk, in the 
hope that it may afford some hint of the way in 
which even difficult pieces of literature may be 
made to appeal to a child. Of course this is not in 
the least meant as a model, but solely and simply 
as an illustration. 

I once asked a fine little fellow of eight what he 
was doing at school. He answered — because this 
happened to be the task which at the moment was 
most pressing — that he was committing to mem- 
ory William Blake's " Tiger." 

" Do you like it ? " I asked. 

" Oh, we don't have to like it," he responded 
with careless frankness, " we just have to learn it." 



AN ILLUSTRATION 97 

The form of his reply appealed to one's sense of 
humor, and I wondered how many of my own 
students in literature might have given answers 
not dissimilar in spirit, had they not outgrown the 
delicious candor which belongs to the first decade 
of a lad's life. The afternoon chanced to be rainy 
and at my disposal. I was curious to see what I 
could do with this combination of Blake and small 
boy, and I made the experiment. I should not 
have chosen the poem for one so young ; but it is 
real, compact of noble imagination, the boy was 
evidently genuine, and a real poem must have 
something for any sincere reader even if he be a 
child. 

The following report of our talk was not written 
down at the time, and makes no pretense of being 
literal. It does represent, so far as I can judge, 
with substantial accuracy what passed between 
the straightforward lad and myself. Too deliberate 
and too diffuse to have taken place in a school- 
room, it yet gives, on an extended scale, what I 
believe is the true method of " teaching literature " 
in all the secondary-school work. I do not claim to 
have originated or to have discovered the method ; 
but I hope that I may be able to make clearer to 
some teachers how children may be helped to do 
their own thinking and thus brought to a vital and 
delighted enjoyment of the masterpieces they study. 

I began to repeat aloud the opening lines of the 
poem. 

" Why, " said the boy, " do you know that ? Did 



98 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

you have to learn it at school when you were little 
like me?" 

" I 'm not sure when I did learn it, " I answered ; 
" I 've known it for a good while ; but I did n't 
just learn it. I like it. " 

I repeated the whole poem, purposely refraining 
from giving it very great force, even in the supreme 
symphonic outburst of the magnificent fifth stanza : 

Tiger, tiger, burning bright 

In the forests of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry ? 

In what distant deeps or skies 

Burnt the fire of thine eyes ? 
On what wings dare he aspire ? 

What the hand dare seize the fire ? 

And what shoulder and what art 

Could twist the sinews of thy heart ? 

And, when thy heart began to beat, 

What dread hand formed thy dread feet ? 

What the hammer ? what the chain ? 

In what furnace was thy brain ? 
What the anvil ? what dread grasp 

Dare its deadly terrors clasp ? 

When the stars threw down their spears, 
And watered heaven with their tears, 

Did he smile His work to see ? 

Did he who made the lamb make thee ? 

" It sounds rather pretty, " I commented, as 
carelessly as possible. 



AN ILLUSTRATION 99 

" Yes, I suppose so, " he assented colorlessly, 
looking at me rather suspiciously. 

He was a shrewd little mortal, and he had been 
so often told at school that he should like this and 
that for which in reality he did not care a button 
that he was on his guard. I made a casual remark 
about something entirely unrelated to the subject. 
It was well that the lad should not feel that he was 
being instructed. Then in a manner as natural and 
easy as I could make it I asked : 

" Did you ever see a tiger ? " 

" Oh, yes ; I 've seen lots of them at the circus. 
Tom Bently never went to but one circus, but I 've 
been to four. " 

"What does a tiger look like?" I went on, 
ignoring the irrelevant. 

" He 's a fierce-looking thing ! Did n't you ever 
see one ? " 

"Yes, I've seen them, but I wondered if they 
looked the same to you as they do to me." 

" Why, how do they look to you ? " 

" I asked you first. It 's only fair for you to say 
first." 

" Well," the 'small boy said, with a fine show of 
being determined to play fair, " I think they look 
like great big, big, big cats. Did you think that ? " 

" That *s exactly what I should have said. They 
really are a sort of cat, you know. Did you ever 
see a keeper stir them up ? " 

" Oh, yes, sir ; and they snarled like anything, 
and licked their lips just like this ! " 



100 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

He gave a highly gratifying imitation, and then 
added vivaciously : "If I were the keeper, I 'd 
keep stirring them up all the time. They did look 
so mad ! " 

" And they opened and shut their eyes slowly," 
I suggested, " as if they 'd like to get hold of their 
keeper." 

" Yes ; and their eyes were just like green 
fire." 

" « Burning bright,' " I quoted ; and then with- 
out giving the boy time to suspect that he was 
being led on, I asked at once : " Did you ever see 
a cat's eyes in the dark ? " 

" Oh, I saw our cat once last summer, when we 
were in the country, under a rosebush after dark, 
when Dick and I got out of the window after we 'd 
gone to bed. She just scared me ; her eyes were 
just like little green lanterns. Dick said they were 
like little bicycle lamps." 

" If it had been a tiger under a bush in the 
night, — ' in the forests of the night,' — " 

"Oh," interrupted the boy with the eagerness of 
a discoverer, " is that what it means ! Did he see 
a tiger in the night under a bush ? A real, truly 
tiger, all loose ? I 'd have run away." 

" I don't know if he ever saw one," I answered. 
" I rather think he saw a tiger or a picture of one, 
or thought of one, and then got to thinking how it 
must seem to come across one in the woods ; when 
one was travelling, say, in the East where tigers 
live wild. If you came upon one in the forest in 



AN ILLUSTRATION 101 

the dark, what do you think would be the first 
thing that would tell you a tiger was near ? " 

"I'd hear him." 

" Did you ever hear a cat moving about ? " 

" No," the boy said doubtfully. " Aunt Katie 
says Spot does n't make any more noise than a sun- 
beam. Could a sunbeam make a noise? " 

" She meant that Spot did n't make any. You 'd 
never hear a tiger coming, for it 's a kind of cat, 
and moves without sound. You wouldn't know 
that way." 

"I'd see him." 

"In the night? You could n't see him." 

" Yes, I could ! Yes, I could ! " he cried triumph- 
antly. " I 'd see his eyes just like green fire." 

I had interested the lad and taken him far 
enough to feel sure he would follow me if I helped 
him on a little faster. I was ready to use clear 
suggestion when I felt that he would respond to it 
as if the thought were his own. 

" Well," I said, " don't you see that this is just 
what the man who wrote the poem meant? He 
got to thinking how the tiger would look in the 
night to anybody that came on him in the forest 
and saw those eyes like green fires shining at 
him out of the jungle. Don't you suppose you or 
I would think they were pretty big fires if we saw 
them, and knew there was a tiger behind them ? " 

" I guess we should ! Wooh ! Do you suppose 
Bruno 'd run ? " 

Bruno was a small and silky water-spaniel, a 



102 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

charming beast in his way, but not especially wel- 
come at this point of the conversation. 

" Very likely ; " I slid over the subject. "The 
man knew that he would have a feeling how big 
and strong that tiger must be : and it gave him 
a shock to think what a fearful thing the beast 
would be there in the dark, with all the warm, 
damp smells of the plants in the air, and the strange 
noises. It would almost take away his breath to 
think what a mighty Being it must have taken to 
make anything so awful as a tiger." 

"Yes," the lad said so quietly that I let him 
think a little. He had snuggled up against my 
knee and laid hold of my fingers, and I knew some 
sense of the matter was working in him. After a 
moment or two I asked him if he could repeat the 
first verse of the poem as if he were the man who 
thought of the tiger in the jungle there, with fierce 
eyes shining out of the dark, and who had so clear 
an idea of the mighty creature that he could n't 
help thinking what a wonderful thing it was that 
it could be created. The boy fixed his eyes on mine 
as if he were getting moved and half-consciously 
desired to be assured that I was utterly serious 
and sympathetic; and in his clear childish voice 
he repeated in a way that had really something of 
a thrill in it : 

" Tiger, tiger, burning bright 
In the forests of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry ? " 



AN ILLUSTRATION 103 

"If a traveller were in the jungle in the dark 
night," I went on after a word of praise for his 
recitation, " I suppose he could n't see much around 
him, the trees would be so thick. He'd have to 
look up to the sky to see anything but the tiger's 
eyes." 

" He 'd see the stars there," the boy observed, just 
as I had hoped he would. " I 've seen stars through 
the trees. I was out in the woods long after dark 
once." 

" Were you really ? The man must have thought, 
the stars looked like the eyes, as if when the animal 
was made the Creator went to the sky itself for 
that fire. Think of a Being that could rise to the 
very stars and take their light in His hand." 

" Ouf ! " the small man cried naively. " I 
should n't want to take fire in my hand ! " 

" The writer of the poem was thinking what a 
wonderful Being He must be that could do it ; but 
that if He could make a creature like the tiger, 
He would be able to do anything." 

The boy reflected a moment, and then, with a 
frank look, asked : " Did the fire in a tiger's eyes 
really come out of the stars ? " 

" I don't think that the poem means that it really 
did," was my answer. " I think it means that when 
the poet thought how wonderful a tiger is, with the 
life and the fierceness shining like a flame in his 
eyes, and how we cannot tell where that fire came 
from, and that the stars overhead were scarcely 
brighter, it seemed as if that was where the green 



104 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

light came from. He was trying to say how wonder- 
ful and terrible it was to him, — especially when he 
thought of coming upon the beast all alone in the 
forest in the night with nobody near to defend him." 

The boy was silent, and thinking hard. He had 
evidently not yet clearly grasped all the idea. 

" But God did n't make a tiger on an anvil and 
put pieces of stars in for eyes," he objected. 

" You told me yesterday that Bruno swims like 
a duck. He does n't really, for a duck goes on the 
top of the water." 

" Oh, but I meant that Bruno goes as fast as 
a duck." 

" And you wanted me to know how well he swims, 
I suppose." 

"Why, of course. Bruno can swim twice as 
fast as Tom Talcott's dog." 

" You said that about the duck to make me know 
what a wonderful swimmer Bruno is, and the man 
who wrote the poem wanted you when you read it 
to feel how wonderful the tiger seemed to him ; its 
eyes as if they were of fire brought from the stars, 
its strength so great that it seemed as if his mus- 
cles had been beaten out on an anvil from red-hot 
steel by some Being mighty enough to do something 
no man could begin to do. The poem does n't mean 
that a tiger was really made in this way ; but it 
does mean that when you think of the strength and 
fearfulness of the creature, able to carry off a man 
or even a horse in its jaws, this is the best way to 
give an idea of how terrible the animal seemed." 



AN ILL USTRA TION 105 

The boy accepted this, and so we came to the 
fifth verse. The range of ideas here is so much be- 
yond the mind of any child that it was necessary to 
suggest most of them, to go very slowly, and in the 
end to be content with a childishly inadequate no- 
tion of the magnificent conception. I gave frankly 
a suggestion of the creation of all the animals at 
the beginning, and of how the angels might have 
stood around like stars, watching full of interest and 
of kindness. The boy was easily made to feel as if 
he had seen the making of the deer and the lamb 
and the horse, and of how the angels might see in 
one or another of the animals a help or a friend to 
man. 

"Then suppose," I said, " that the angels should 
see God make the great tiger, royal and terrible. 
What would they see ? " 

" Oh, a great fierce thing," the lad returned. 
" Do you suppose he 'd jump right at the deer and 
the lambs?" 

" He would make the angels think how he could. 
How different from the other animals he 'd be." 

" Yes, he'd have big, big, sharp teeth, and he 'd 
lash his tail, and he 'd put out his claws. Do you 
suppose he 'd sharpen his claws the way Muff does 
on the leather chairs ? " 

" Very likely he would," I said. " At any rate 
the angels would think how the other animals 
would be torn to pieces if the tiger got hold of them; 
and they would think of what would happen to men. 
Perhaps they would imagine some poor Hindu 



106 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

woman, with her baby on her back going through 
a path in the jungle, and how the tiger might leap 
out suddenly and tear them both to pieces. The 
angels could n't understand how God could bear to 
make any animal so cruel, or how He could be will- 
ing to have anything so wicked in the world. They 
would be so sorry for all the suffering that was to 
come that they would throw down their spears and 
not be able to keep back the tears." 

"But angels wouldn't have spears, would 
they?" 

I went to a shelf of the library in which we 
were talking and took down a volume in which I 
found a picture of St. Michael in full armor. 

" It is like the fire from the stars," I said. " Of 
course nobody ever saw an angel to know how he 
would look, but to show how strong and powerful 
an angel might be, a good many men that make 
pictures have painted them like knights." 

" But men that had spears would n't cry ; I 
should n't think angels would." 

" Even the strongest men cry sometimes, my 
boy ; only it has to be something tremendous to 
make them. A thing that would make the angels 
6 water heaven with their tears ' must be something 
so terrible that you could n't tell how sad it was." 

" Well, anyway, I 'd rather be a tiger than a 
lamb," he proclaimed rather unexpectedly. 

" Very likely," I assented, " but I think you 'd 
rather have a lamb come after Baby Lou than a 
tiger." 



AN ILLUSTRATION 107 

" Oh, I would n't want a tiger to get Baby- 
Lou ! " he cried with a tremor. 

" I suppose that is the way the angels might feel 
at the idea of the tiger's killing anybody," I re- 
joined. 

With a lad somewhat older one would have 
gone on to develop the thought that to the watching 
angels the tiger, leaping out fierce and bloodthirsty 
from the hand of the Creator, would be like the 
incarnation of evil, and that in their weeping was 
represented all the sorrowful problem of the exist- 
ence of evil in the Universe ; but this on the present 
occasion I did not touch upon. 

" So the angels," I went on, " could n't keep 
back their tears ; but what did God do ? " 

" Why, He smiled ! " the boy answered, evi- 
dently with astonishment at the thought which now 
for the first time came home to him. " I should n't 
think He 'd have smiled." 

" When you were so disappointed the other day 
because the carriage was broken and you could n't 
go over to the lake in it, do you remember that 
Uncle Jo laughed ? " 

" Oh, he knew we could go in his automobile." 

" He knew." 

" Yes, he knew," began the boy, " and so — " He 
stopped, and looked at me with a sudden soberness. 
" What did God know ? " he asked seriously. 

" He must have known that somehow everything 
was right, don't you think ? He knew why He had 
made the tiger, just as He knew why He had made 



108 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

the lamb, and so He could see that everything 
would be as it should be in the end." 

"But — but — " 

The boy was speechless in face of the eternal 
problem, as so many greater and wiser have been 
before him. It seemed to me that we had done 
quite enough for once, so I broke off the talk with 
a suggestion that we try the boy's favorite game. 
That was the end of the matter for the time, but in 
the library of the lad's father the copy of Blake is 
so befingered at the page on which " The Tiger " 
is printed that it is evident that the boy, with the 
soiled fingers of his age, has turned it often. How 
much he made out of the talk I cannot pretend to 
say, but at least he came to love the poem. 

I said at the start that I do not give the conver- 
sation, which is actual, as a sample, but as an illus- 
tration. The poem called for more leading on of 
the pupil than would many, for as Blake is one of 
the most imaginative of English writers, his con- 
ceptions are the more subtle and profound. A class, 
moreover, cannot be treated always with the same 
deliberation as that which is natural in the case of 
a single child ; but the essential principle, I be- 
lieve, is the same everywhere. 



IX 

EDUCATIONAL 

Educational in the broadest sense must any- 
thing be which is inspirational ; for to interest the 
child in literature, to make him enter into it as into 
a charming heritage, is more truly to educate him 
than would be any pedantic or formal instruction 
whatever. I have used the term specifically, how- 
ever, as a convenient word by which to designate 
that form of instruction which is more deliberately 
and formally an effort to make clear what literature 
may be held to teach. To regard any work of art 
as directly and didactically teaching anything is 
perhaps to fail in so far to treat it as art ; but the 
point which such a consideration raises is too deep 
for our present inquiry, and may be disregarded 
except in the case of unintelligent attempts to make 
every tale or poem embody and convey a set moral. 
To endeavor to aid pupils to perceive fully the re- 
lation of what they read to themselves and to the 
society in which they live is part of the legitimate 
work of the teacher of literature. In a word, while 
the term is perhaps not the best, I have used the 
word educational to designate such study as is 
directed to helping the student to gain from books 
a wider knowledge of life and human nature. 



110 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

It is not my idea that in actual practice a formal 
division is to be made, and still less that what 
I have called inspirational consideration of litera- 
ture is ever to be discontinued. In the growth 
of a child's mind comes naturally a simple and 
unreflecting pleasure in literature, beginning, as 
has been said, with unsophisticated delight in the 
marked rhythms of Mother Goose or in the whole- 
some joy of the fairy-story. To this is gradually 
added an equally unreflecting absorption of certain 
ideas concerning life, which by slow degrees gives 
place to reflection conscious and deliberate. The de- 
light and the unconscious yielding to the influence of 
the work of art remain, and to the end they are more 
effective than any deliberate and conscious ideas 
can be. Nothing that we teach our pupils about 
a poem can compare in influence with what they 
absorb without realizing what they are doing. One 
of the great dangers of this whole matter is that 
we shall hurry them from an instinctive to a culti- 
vated attitude toward literature ; that we shall re- 
place natural and healthful pleasure by laborious 
and conscientious study. In dealing with any piece 
of real literature the wise method, it seems to me, 
is to take it up first for the absolute, straightfor- 
ward emotional enjoyment. 1 It is of very little use 
to study any work which the children have not first 
come to care for. After they see why a piece is 
worth while from the point of view of pleasure, 

1 The vocabulary, of course, being known before the text is 
attempted. 



EDUCATIONAL 111 

then study may go further and consider what is the 
core of the work intellectually and emotionally. 

In speaking of treating literature educationally 
I do not refer to that sort of instruction which so 
generally and unfortunately takes the place of the 
true study of masterpieces. The history of a poem 
or a drama, the biography of authors, and all work 
of this sort should in any case be kept subordinate 
and should generally, I believe, come after the stu- 
dent has at least a tolerable idea and a fair appre- 
ciation of the writings themselves. What is import- 
ant and what I mean by the educational treatment 
of literature is the development of those general 
truths concerning human nature and human feeling 
which form the tangible thought of a play or poem. 
The line of distinction between this and the less 
tangible ideas which are conveyed by form, by 
melody, by suggestion, — the ideas, in short, which 
are the secret of the inspirational effect of a work, 
— cannot be sharply drawn. Many of the tangible 
ideas will have been obvious in the reading of which 
the recognized purpose has been mere delight and 
inspiration ; and on the other hand the two classes 
of ideas are so closely interwoven that it is not 
possible, even were it advisable, to separate them 
entirely. It is possible, however, after the pupil 
has come to take pleasure in a work, — though it 
should never be attempted sooner, — to go on to 
the deliberate study of the intellectual content, 
and to take up broad and general truths. 

One way of preparing a class for the work which 



112 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

is now to be clone is to speak to them of literature 
as a sort of high kind of algebra ; to let them see, 
that is, how the distinction between the great mass 
of reading-matter and what is fairly to be called 
literature is not unlike the difference with which 
they are familiar in mathematics between arithme- 
tic and the higher grade of work which comes 
after. The newspaper, the text-book, the history, 
the scientific treatise all deal with the concrete, just 
as arithmetic has to do with absolute quantities. 
In the mental development of the pupil the time 
comes when he is considered sufficiently advanced 
to go on from the handling of concrete things to 
the dealing with the abstract. When he is able 
to understand the relation between the sum paid for 
one bushel of wheat and the amount needed to 
purchase fifty, he may be advanced to the lore of 
general formulae, and be made to understand how 
x may represent any price and y any number of 
bushels. In the same way from reading in a news- 
paper the story of the assassination of the late 
King of Servia, the concrete case, he may go on to 
read "Macbeth," wherein Duncan represents any 
monarch of given character, and Macbeth not a 
particular, actual, concrete assassin, but a mur- 
derer of a sort, a type, the general or abstract char- 
acter. The student has gone on from the particular 
to the general ; from the concrete to the abstract ; 
from the arithmetic of human nature to its algebra. 
A similar comparison between history and poetry 
is on the same grounds easily to be made between 



EDUCATIONAL 113 

the history lesson and the chronicle plays of Shake- 
speare. The student who in his nursery days started 
out with the instinctive question in regard to the 
fairy-tale : " Is it true ? " begins to perceive the 
difference between literal and essential truth. He 
perceives that verity in literature is not simple and 
obvious fidelity to the specific fact or event ; he 
learns to appreciate that the truth of art, like the 
truth of algebra, lies in its accuracy in representing 
truth in the abstract : he comes to appreciate the 
narrowness of the nursery question, which asked 
only for the literal fact, and he begins to compre- 
hend something of the symbolic. 

An excellent illustration for practical use is a 
poem like "How they Brought the Good News 
from Ghent to Aix." Any live, wholesome boy is 
sure to tingle with the swing and fervor of the 
verse, the sense of the open air, the excitement, the 
doubt, the hope, the joyful climax. It is easy to 
lead the class on to consider how exhilarating such 
an experience would be, and to go on from this 
to point out that the poem does not describe a 
literal, actual occurrence ; but that it is a general- 
ized expression of the zest and exhilaration of a 
superb, all but impossible ride, with the added ex- 
citement of being responsible for the freedom or 
even the lives of the folk of a whole city. 

The first feeling of the class on learning that such 
a ride was not taken is sure to be one of disappoint- 
ment. It is better to meet this frankly, and to 
compensate for it by arousing interest in the em- 



114 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

bodiment of abstract feeling. One great source of 
the lack of interest in literature at the present time 
is that the material, practical character of the age 
makes it difficult for the general reader to respect 
anything but the concrete fact. Literature is apt 
to present itself to the hard-headed young fellow of 
the public school as a lot of make-believe stuff, and 
therefore at best a matter of rather frivolous amuse- 
ment. The surest way of correcting this common 
attitude of mind is to nourish the appreciation of 
what fact in art really means ; to cultivate a clear 
perception of how a poem or a tale may be the 
truest thing in the world, although dealing with 
imaginary personages and with incidents which 
never happened. 1 

As an illustration of the sense in which liter- 
ature is a sort of algebra of human feeling some- 
what more remote from the ordinary life of a child 
may be taken another poem of Browning's, " The 
Lost Leader." My experience is that most youth 
of the school age start out by being able to make 
little or nothing of this. By a little talk, however, 
beginning perhaps as simply as with the way in 
which a lad feels when a school-fellow he had faith 
in has failed in a crisis, has for some personal advan- 
tage gone over to the other party in a school elec- 
tion, or of how the class would feel if some teacher 
who had been with the students in some effort to 
obtain an extension of privilege to which the schol- 
ars felt themselves to be honestly entitled had for 
1 See page 221. 



EDUCATIONAL 115 

his own purposes swung over to the opposite side, 
the whole thing may be brought home. The boys 
may be led on to imagine what are the feelings of 
a youth eager for the cause of freedom and the 
uplifting of man, when one whom he has looked to 
as a leader, one in whom he has had absolute faith, 
deserts the rank for honors or for money. Once the 
young minds are on the right track it is by no means 
impossible to bring them to see pretty clearly that 
in the poem is not the question of a particular man 
or a particular cause ; but that Browning is dealing 
with a universal expression of the pain that would 
come to any man, to any one of them, in believ- 
ing that the leader who had been most trusted and 
revered had in reality been unworthy, and had 
betrayed the cause his followers believed he would 
gladly die to defend. 

These two examples from Browning I have taken 
almost at random, and not because they are unusual 
in this respect, for this quality is the universal pro- 
perty of all real literature, and indeed is one of the 
tests by which real literature is to be identified. 
Any selection which it is worth while to give stu- 
dents at all must have this relation which I have 
called " algebraic," but of which the true name is 
imaginative ; and it is certainly one of the import- 
ant parts of anything which in a high sense is pro- 
perly to be called "teaching" literature to -make 
the scholars realize and appreciate this. 

The next step is more difficult because far more 
subtle ; and I confess frankly that it is all but 



116 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

impossible to propose methods by which formal 
instruction may deal with it. The aim of litera- 
ture is largely the attempt to produce a mood. The 
prime aim of the poet is to induce in the reader 
a state of feeling which will lead inevitably to the 
reception of whatever he offers in the same mood 
in which he offers it. In the simplest cases no in- 
struction is needed, for even with school-boys a 
ringing metre, to take a simple and obvious exam- 
ple, has somewhat the same effect as the dashing 
swing of martial music ; whoever comes under its 
influence falls insensibly into the frame of mind 
in which the ideas of the verse should be received. 
The thoughts are accepted in the exhilarated spirit 
in which they were written, and the effects of the 
metre are as great or greater than the influence of 
the literal meaning. It is a commonplace to call 
attention to the part which the melody of poetry 
or the rhythm of prose plays in the effect, but how 
to aid pupils to a responsiveness to this language of 
form is not the least of the problems of the teacher. 
The means by which an author establishes or 
communicates his mood do not always appeal to 
the young. Indeed, beyond a certain limited extent 
they appeal to most adults only after careful culti- 
vation in the understanding of art-language. It is 
as idle to suppose that literature appeals to every- 
body and without aesthetic education as it is to 
suppose that sculpture or music will surely meet 
with a response everywhere. Nobody expects Bee- 
thoven's " Ninth Symphony " or Bach's " Passion 



EDUCATIONAL 117 

Music " to arouse enthusiasm in accidentally as- 
sorted school-children, yet to all the pupils in a 
mixed public school are offered the parallel works 
of Shakespeare and Milton. Unless a class is made 
up of boys or girls with unusual aptitude or wisely 
and carefully trained to responsiveness to metri- 
cal effect, it seems hardly less idle to offer them 
" Comus " or "Lycidas " than it would be to expect 
them to enjoy a classic concert. The language of 
form in the higher range of literature is to them 
an unknown tongue. 

Children are likely to be susceptible to marked 
metrical effects, as witness their love of " Mother 
Goose ; " but to the more delicate music of verse 
they are often largely or completely insensitive. 
A musical ear is not, it is probable, to be created, 
but it is certainly possible to develop the metrical 
sense. Children who are born with good native 
responsiveness to rhythm often are so badly trained 
or so neglected as to seem to have none, and it is 
part of the office of instruction to call out whatever 
powers lie in them latent. This is largely accom- 
plished by the sort of use of literature which I have 
called "inspirational." In the ideal home-training 
children are so taken on from the rhymes of the 
nursery to more advanced literature that develop- 
ment of the rhythmical sense is continuous and 
inevitable; but one of the things which every 
school-teacher knows best is that this sort of home- 
training is rare and the work must be done in the 
class. The substitute is a poor one, but it has at 



118 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

least some degree of the universal human respon- 
siveness to rhythm to appeal to. 

Another difficulty is that children have to learn 
the verbal language of literature. Much of the 
atmosphere of a poem, for instance, is likely to be 
produced by suggestion, by the mention of legend or 
tale or hero, when the reader must find in previous 
knowledge and association a key to what is intended. 
All this is likely to be largely or entirely lost on 
children ; and yet this is often the very quintes- 
sence of what the author tries to convey. Children 
are constantly at the same disadvantage in under- 
standing literature that they are in comprehending 
life. They have not gathered the associations or 
experienced the emotions which make so large a 
part of the language of great writers. All this 
renders it difficult for the instructor to be sure that 
his class has any inkling even of the mood in which 
a piece is intended ; yet he must first of all be sure 
that as far as is possible he has put them, each 
pupil according to his character and acquirements, 
in touch with the spirit of the work to be studied. 

This cannot be done entirely. We cannot hope 
that a lad of a dozen years will enter into all the 
emotions, all the passions of the great poets. He 
may, however, be absorbingly interested and thrilled 
by " Macbeth," or the "Tempest," or the "Mer- 
chant of Venice." He does not get from these 
plays all that his elders might get, any more than 
he would perceive the full meaning and passion of 
a tremendous situation in real life ; but he does get 



EDUCATIONAL 119 

some portion of the message, some perception of the 
deeps and heights of human nature. Even if he 
find no more than simple, unreasoning enjoyment, 
he is gaining unconsciously, and he is obviously 
nourishing a love for good literature. 

The question of what is thoroughness in school 
study of literature is of much importance, and it is 
of no less difficulty. Certainly it is not merely the 
mastery of technical obscurities of language, the 
solving of philological puzzles, or the careful ex- 
amination of historical facts. Thoroughness in these 
things, as has already been said, may be exactness 
in learning about literature, but not in the study 
of literature itself. Consideration of the average 
acquirements of pupils in secondary schools makes 
it fairly evident, it seems to me, that the study of 
technique in auy of its phases cannot in these 
classes be carried very far without the danger of 
its degenerating into the most lifeless formalism ; 
and perhaps in nothing else is the tact and judg- 
ment of the teacher so well shown as in the decision 
how far it is wise to carry study along particular 
lines. I have never encountered a class even in my 
college work which I could have set to the subjects 
recommended in a book for teachers of literature 
which advises drilling the students of the high 
school on the relations in the plays of Shakespeare 
" of metre to character," whatever that may mean. 
Neither should I set them to distinguish, as is 
advised by another text-book, between " the kinds 
of imagination employed : (a) Modifying ; (5) Re- 



120 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

constructive ; (c) Poetical : creative, imperative, 
or associative." I could not, indeed, do much with 
such subjects, from the simple fact that I do not 
myself know what such questions mean, and still 
less could I answer them. Each instructor, how- 
ever, must decide for himself, and with every class 
decide anew. No fixed standard can be established, 
but each case must be settled on its own merits. 



EXAMINATIONAL 

Examinations are at present held to be an 
essential part of the machinery of education, and 
whether we do or do not believe this to be true, we 
are as teachers forced to accept them. Especially is 
it incumbent on teachers in the secondary schools 
to pay much attention to accustoming pupils to 
these ordeals and to preparing them to go through 
them unscathed. Many instructors, as has been 
said already, become so completely the slaves to 
this process that they confine their efforts to it 
entirely, and few are able to prevent its taking 
undue importance in their work and in the minds 
of their pupils. 

The general principle should be kept in mind 
that no examination is of real value for itself in the 
training of youth, and that to study for it directly 
and explicitly is fatal to all the higher uses of the 
study of literature or of anything else. Tests of 
proficiency and advancement are necessary, but 
they should be regarded as tests, and no pains 
should be spared to impress upon every student 
the fact that beyond this office of measuring attain- 
ment they are of no value whatever. 



122 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

Examinations exist, however, and nothing which 
can be done directly is likely to remove from the 
minds of sub-freshmen the notion that they study 
literature largely if not solely for the sake of being 
able to struggle successfully with the difficulties 
of entrance papers. The only means of combating 
this idea is the indirect method of making the 
study interesting in and for itself ; of nourishing 
a love for great writings and fostering appreciation 
of masterpieces. It may be added, moreover, that 
this is also the surest way of securing ease and 
proficiency on just those lines in which it is the 
ambition of pedantic teachers to have their pupils 
excel. Classes are more effectively trained for 
college tests by teaching them to think, to examine 
for themselves, to have real responsiveness and 
feeling for literature, than they can possibly be by 
any drill along formal lines. Here as pretty gen- 
erally in life the indirect is the surest. 

More is done in the way of preparation for any 
rational examination, I believe, by training youth 
to recognize good literature and to realize what 
makes it good, than by any amount of deliberate 
drill of especially prescribed works or laborious 
following out of the lines indicated by old examina- 
tion-papers. Much of this is effected by what has 
been spoken of as inspirational teaching, the simple 
training of children to have real enjoyment of the 
best. In the lower grades of school this is all that 
can be profitably attempted. Before the student 
leaves the secondary school, however, he should be 



EXAMINATIONAL 123 

able for himself to make in a general way an appli- 
cation of the principles which underlie literary dis- 
tinctions. He should be able broadly to recognize 
the qualities which belong to the best work. He 
should be able from personal experience to appre- 
ciate the force of the remarks of De Quincey: 

What is it that we mean by literature ? Popularly, 
and amongst the thoughtless, it is held to include every- 
thing that is printed in a book. Little logic is required 
to disturb this definition. The most thoughtless person 
is easily made aware that in the idea of literature one 
essential element is some relation to a general and com- 
mon interest of man, so that what applies only to a local 
or professional or merely personal interest, even though 
presenting itself in the shape of a book, will not belong 
to literature. . . . Men have so little reflected on the 
higher functions of literature as to find it a paradox if 
one should describe it as a mean or subordinate purpose 
of books to give information. But this is a paradox only 
in the sense which makes it honorable to be paradoxical. 
. . . What do you learn from "Paradise Lost"? No- 
thing at all. What do you learn from a cookery-book ? 
Something new, something you did not know before, in 
every paragraph. But would you therefore put the 
wretched cookery-book on a higher level of estimation 
than the divine poem ? What you owe to Milton is not 
any knowledge, of which a million separate items are still 
but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly 
level ; what you owe is power, that is, exercise and ex- 
pansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy with 
the infinite, where each pulse and each separate influx is 
a step upward, a step ascending as upon a Jacob's ladder 
from earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth. All 



124 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

the steps of knowledge, from first to last, carry you 
further on the same plane, but could never raise you one 
foot above your ancient level of earth ; whereas the very 
first step in power is a flight, is an ascending movement 
into another element where earth is forgotten. — " The 
Poetry of Pope." 

If a boy or girl has any vital and personal per- 
ception of the truth which is here so eloquently set 
forth, this perception affords a certain criterion by 
which to judge whatever work comes to hand. It 
will also give both the inclination and the power to 
judge rightly, so that anything which an examina- 
tion-paper may legitimately ask is in so far within 
the scope of ordinary thought. 

I have ventured, in another chapter, to give some 
idea of the way in which I think such a work as 
" Macbeth " might be treated in the secondary 
school. I wish to emphasize the fact that it is an 
illustration and not a model. It is the way in which 
I should do it ; but the teaching of literature, I re- 
peat, is naught if it is not marked by the person- 
ality of the teacher. Of the results to be aimed at 
one need not be in doubt ; concerning the methods 
there are and there should be as many opinions as 
r there are sound and individual instructors. This 
illustration I have included because it may serve 
as a sort of diagram to make plain things which 
can only clumsily be presented otherwise, and be- 
cause I hope that it may be suggestive even to 
teachers who differ widely from this exact method. 

What is aimed at in this manner of treating the 



EXAMINATIONAL 125 

play is primarily the enjoyment of the pupil, second- 
arily the broadening of his mind, and thirdly the 
training of his powers for the examinations inevit- 
ably lying in wait for him. It may seem contra- 
dictory that I put pleasure first and yet would 
begin with straightforward drill on the vocabulary. 
Such training, however, is preparatory to the tak- 
ing up of literature, I believe it necessary to the 
best results, and I have already said that to my 
mind no need exists for making this dull. Even 
if it be looked upon as simple drudgery, however, 
I should not shirk it. Children should be taught 
that they are to meet hard work pluckily. They 
cannot evade the multiplication-table without sub- 
sequent inconvenience, and the sooner they realize 
that this is true in principle all through life, the 
better for them. Their enjoyment, moreover, will 
be tenfold greater if they earn it by sturdy work. 

It would be well, I believe, if all teachers in the 
secondary schools who are in the habit of concern- 
ing themselves largely with examinations and of 
allowing the minds of those under them to become 
fixed on these could realize that readers of blue- 
books are sure to be favorably impressed by two 
things : by the expression of thoughts obviously I 
individual, and by the evidence of clear thinking. 
If these two qualities characterize an examination- 
book, the chances of its passing muster are so large 
that exact formal knowledge counts for little in 
comparison. All teachers who are intelligently in 
earnest try to put as little stress on examinations as 



126 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

is possible under existing conditions, but not all keep 
clearly in mind the fact that the best remedy for 
possible harm is the cultivation of the student's 
individuality. 

The question of written work in preparation for 
entrance tests is a difficult one, and it is one which 
has been largely answered by the papers set by the 
colleges. It is natural that teachers who are en- 
tirely aware that their own reputations will largely 
depend upon the success of the candidates they send 
up should endeavor to train their classes in the es- 
pecial line of writing which seems best to suit the 
ideas of examiners. The principle of selection is 
not, it seems to me, a sound one, but it is inevitable. 
The one thing which may be done is to make the 
topics selected as human and as personal as pos- 
sible : to insist that the boy or girl who is writing 
of Lady Macbeth or Hamlet shall make the strong- 
est effort possible to realize the character as a real 
being ; shall as far as possible take the attitude of 
writing concerning some actual person about whom 
are known the facts set down in the play. This is 
less difficult than it sounds, and while it is never 
entirely possible for a child to realize Lady Mac- 
beth as if she were a neighbor, most children can 
go much farther in this direction than is generally 
appreciated. 

Themes retelling the plot of novel or play are 
seldom satisfactory. Satisfactorily to summarize the 
story of a work of any length requires more literary 
grasp than can possibly be expected in a secondary 



EX A MINA TIONAL 127 

school. It is far better to set the wits of children 
to work to fill up gaps of time in the stories as they 
are originally written ; to imagine what Macbeth 
and his wife had said to each other before he goes 
to the chamber of Duncan in the second act, for 
instance, or the talk between Silas Marner and 
Eppie after the visit in which Godfrey Cass dis- 
closed himself as the girl's father. These are not 
easy subjects, and it is not to be expected that the 
grade of work produced will be high, but it is at 
least likely to be original and genuine. 

Description is a snare into which it is easy for 
teacher or pupil to fall. It generally means the 
more or less conscious imitation of passages from 
the reading, or a sort of crazy-quilt of scraps in 
which sentences of the author are clumsily pieced 
together. In the highest grades good work may 
sometimes be obtained by asking pupils to describe 
the setting of a scene in a play, but this is far too 
difficult for most classes. 

Examination of character, of situations, or of I 
motives affords the best opportunity for written 
work in connection with literary study. To make 
literary study subordinate to the practice of com- 
position is manifestly wrong, yet in many schools 
this is done in practice even if it is not justified in 
theory. Children should be taught to write by other 
means than by themes in connection with the mas- 
terpieces of literature. The old cry against using 
" Paradise Lost," and the soliloquies of Hamlet as 
exercises in parsing might well be repeated with 



128 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

added emphasis of the modern fashion of making 
Shakespeare and Milton mere adjuncts to a course 
in composition. The written work is, of course, to 
be corrected where it is faulty, but its chief purpose 
should never be anything outside of the better un- 
derstanding and appreciation of the authors read. 

In a brief, sensible pamphlet on " Methods of 
Teaching of Novels " May Estelle Cook remarks : 

There is another point which I should like to make 
for the study of character, though with some hesitation, 
since there is room for great difference of opinion about 
it. It is this : that the study of character leads directly 
to the exercise of the moral instinct. Whether we like 
it or not, it is true that the school-boy — even the boy, 
and much more the girl — will raise the question, " Is it 
right ? " and " Is it wrong ? " and that we must either 
answer or ignore these questions. My own feeling about 
it is that this irrepressible moral instinct was included 
by Providence partly for the purpose of making a special 
diversion in favor of the English teacher. ... A boy 
will read scenes in " Macbeth " through a dozen times 
for the sake of deciding whether Macbeth or Lady Mac- 
beth was chiefly responsible for the murder of Duncan, 
when he will read them only once for the story ; and 
this extra zeal is not so much because he wants to sat- 
isfy a craving for facts, as because he enjoys fixing 
praise or blame. . . . My experience with the Sir Roger 
de Coverley papers has been that the class failed to get 
any imaginative grasp of them until I frankly appealed 
to the moral instinct by asking, "What did Addison 
mean to teach in this paper?" "Did the Eighteenth 
Century need that lesson ? " and " Do we still need it ? " 
By that process the class have finally reached a grasp 



EXAMINATIONAL 129 

of Sir Roger which has given them fortitude to write 
a theme on " Sir Roger at an Afternoon Tea." 

My own definition of imagination is evidently not 
that of the writer, and I am not able to agree that 
this appeal to the moral instinct develops anything 
other than an intellectual understanding ; but that 
point is unimportant here. The thing which is 
to be noted is that on the moral side children may 
be able to think intelligently and individually in 
regard to the characters and the situations of the 
plays and the novels read. The teacher, in choosing 
such subjects for written work, must, of course, be 
careful to avoid topics which have already been con- ' 
sidered in the book itself. In a novel by George 
Eliot, for instance, all possible moral issues are 
likely to be so discussed and rediscussed by the 
novelist as to leave little room for the thought 
of the reader to exercise itself independently; 
but in all the plays of Shakespeare, and in the fic- 
tion of most of the masters, the opportunities are 
ample. 

The supreme test of any subject which is to be 
given to students in their written work is whether 
it is one upon which it is reasonable to suppose they 
can and will have thought which is individual and 
therefore original. If it were necessary to make 
nice distinctions between that which is and that 
which is not legitimately part of the study of lit- 
erature as an art, one must go much further than 
this. The writing of themes, however, is part of the 
examinational side of the work ; the main thing is 



130 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

to be sure that it is not dwelt upon more than is 
necessary, and that it is within the range of the 
personal experience of the student. If teachers feel 
compelled to set their classes to write formal and 
lifeless themes on pedantic topics such as too often 
appear in examination-papers, they will do well to 
keep in mind that this is not the study of literature, 
but a stultifying process which lessens the power of 
appreciation and replaces intelligent comprehension 
by mechanical imitation. 



In connection with the subject of this chapter 
I may mention a device which may not be without 
practical value in secondary-school examinations. 
It affords a means of discovering how well the 
student is succeeding in grasping general principles 
and in making actual application of them ; while 
at the same time it should impress upon him the 
fact that he is not studying merely a series of re- 
quired readings, but the nature and qualities of 
literature. 

On an examination-paper in second-year English 
at the Institute of Technology was put this test : 

It is assumed that the student has never read the fol- 
lowing extract. State what seem its excellent points 
(a) of workmanship ; (b) of thought ; (c) of imagina- 
tion. 

To this was added a brief extract from some stand- 
ard author. 

The opening statement was made in order that 



EX A MINA TIONA L 131 

the class should understand the selection to be not 
from any required reading, but from some work 
presumably entirely unfamiliar. The points of ex- 
cellence only were asked for in order to fix attention 
on merits ; and indirectly to strengthen, so far as 
might be, the perception of the importance of looking 
in literature for merits rather than for defects. It 
is undoubtedly proper that scholars should be able 
to perceive defects, but this power is best trained 
by educating them to be sensitive and responsive to / 
excellencies. 1 

The necessities of time made it impossible to put 
upon the papers of which I am speaking extracts 
of much length, and the class were told that not 
much was expected in comment upon the thought 
expressed. The purpose of the question, that of 
seeing how intelligently they were able to apply 
such principles as they had learned, was also 
frankly put. They were warned against generalities 
and statements unsupported. Then they were left to 
their own devices. The results were all suggestive, 
and of course were of widely varying degrees of 
merit. A few samples may be given, chosen, I 
confess, from those more interesting. On one pa- 
per were the opening lines of the second book of 
" Paradise Lost." 

High on a throne of royal state, which far 
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand 
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, 
Satan exalted sat. 

1 See page 205. 



132 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

Among the comments were these : 

Of the workmanship of this selection we may say that 
it is good. The selection of words is especially forcible. 
" Gorgeous east " and " richest hand " are extremely so. 
But what I consider a fine use of a word is the word 
" barbaric." Here we can see the early inhabitants of 
the uncivilized rich countries of the east ; the inhabitants 
ignorant of the value of their wealth, throwing it around 
as we would the pebbles on a beach. The thought and 
the imagination are good. We can see before us the viv- 
idly portrayed picture. There sits Satan high above his 
surrounding in such rich and dazzling magnificence that 
it outshines even the richest kings of the richest part 
of the world. 

The best point of the workmanship consists in placing 
the description first and not completing the thought until 
the last line ; thus keeping the reader in suspense, and 
causing careful attention to be put on all the sentence. 
The words " high," " throne," " royal," and " exalted " 
combine to bring out the thought of Satan's majesty. 
The thought of unbounded wealth is brought out by 
the use of the word " showers " in the third line. The 
author is able to give us a much more vivid idea of 
the magnificence of the throne by letting us construct the 
throne to suit ourselves than by giving a detailed de- 
scription and leaving nothing to the imagination. Even 
the materials are only suggested, the whole idea being 
one of unbounded wealth and splendor. 

The choice of words is one of the best points in the 
workmanship of the quotation. The arrangement also 
adds emphasis. All the descriptions of the throne are 
so vivid that the mind is deeply impressed by the splen- 
dor and richness of the throne. The " gorgeous east " 



EXAMINATIONAL 133 

is very expressive of wealth and beauty. With this ar- 
rangement of words the piece becomes very striking and 
the choice of the strongest words is shown too in touch 
with the whole sentence. Whereas on the other hand if 
any other arrangement had been used much of the force 
of these words would have been lost. The thought of 
the extract is to describe the great wealth and beauty 
with which Satan is surrounded. The writer must have 
a very vivid imagination to describe such a scene of 
wealth and beauty. The first word, " High," appeals 
directly to the imagination and immediately gives the 
impression of power. 

These answers were written by boys who had 
not been called upon to do anything of the sort 
before, and while their inadequacy is evident 
enough, they are genuine, and are sound as far 
as they go. Of course, after such a test, the first 
business of the teacher is to go over the selection 
and to show how he would himself have answered 
the question. The class is then ready to appreciate 
qualities which might be recited to them in vain 
before they have set their minds to the problem. 
In the examples I have given no one has touched, 
for instance, upon the suggestiveness of the words 
" Ormus " and " Ind," but very little is needed to 
make them see this after they have had the passage 
in an examination-paper. 

A couple of examples dealing with the first two 
stanzas of Byron's " Destruction of Sennacherib " 
may be given by way of showing how a different 
selection was treated. 



134 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

The first thing I noticed in reading the extract was the 
perfect rhythm. You cannot read the extract without 
wanting to say it aloud. Then the choice of words struck 
me : " The sheen of their spears ; " " when summer is 
green." It is hard for me to distinguish workmanship, 
thought, and imagination. I cannot tell whether the 
words and metaphors used in the extract were the re- 
sult of deliberate choice and of long thought ; but I 
strongly suspect that he saw the whole thing in his 
imagination, and the words just came to him. It is 
hard to understand how anything that reads so smoothly 
could have been written with labor. The strongest 
point of the extract seems to be its richness in illustra- 
tion : " The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the 
fold." No long, detailed description could explain 
better the wildness of such an attack, the sudden swoop 
of some half-barbaric horde, striking suddenly, and then 
disappearing into the night. " The sheen of the spears 
was like stars on the sea." The flash from a spear 
would be just such a gleam as the reflected star from the 
crest of a wave, visible for a moment and then gone. 

Some of its excellent points of workmanship are mel- 
ody and selection of words. The melody is excellent. 
It has a soothing effect when read aloud, and there is 
not a place where one would hesitate in regard to the 
accenting of words. I believe the melody is so good 
that a person only knowing the pronunciation of the 
first line could almost read the rest of it correctly be- 
cause the sound of each line is so closely connected with 
that of all other lines. The selection of words is very 
good. There is not a place where a substitution could be 
made which would improve the meaning, sense, or mel- 
ody. The extract shows great thought. In the last para- 
graph especially where the Assyrians are compared to 



EXAMINATIONAL 135 

the leaves of summer and in autumn. No better thought 
could bring out more clearly how badly the host was 
defeated. In the first paragraph it also compares the 
Assyrians to a wolf coming down upon a fold. This 
again gives a definite idea, and seems to point out how 
confident they were of victory. The imagination is very 
vivid. You can almost think you were on the field and 
that all the events were taking place before you. 

I have copied these partly to emphasize the / 
point that it is idle to expect too much, and partly 
to illustrate the form in which genuine perception 
is likely to work out upon a school examination- 
paper. These have not been chosen as the best 
papers written, but each is good because each shows 
sincere opinion. 

This sort of question is of course in the line of 
what is constantly done in class, but it is after 
all a different thing when it is made to emphasize 
the idea that an examination is a test of the power 
to appreciate literature instead of an exercise of 
memory. 



XI 

THE STUDY OF PROSE 

Method in teaching is properly the adaptation 
of the personality of a given teacher to the person- 
ality of a given class. It cannot be defined by 
hard and fast rules, and the only value in present- 
ing such illustrations as the following is that they 
may afford hints which teachers will be able with 
advantage to develop in terms of their own in- 
dividuality. The way that is wise in one is never 
to be set down as the way best for another ; and 
here as elsewhere I offer not a model but simply 
an illustration. If it suggest, it has fulfilled a bet- 
ter purpose than if it were taken blindly as a rigid 
guide. 

My own feeling would be that classes in literature 
should be provided with nothing but the bare text, 
without notes of any kind unless with a glossary of 
terms not to be found in available books of refer- 
ence. In the matter of looking up difficulties the 
books of reference in the school library should be 
used ; and if the school has no library beyond the 
dictionary, I should still hold to my opinion. The 
vocabulary may be very largely worked out with 
any fairly comprehensive dictionary, and what can- 
not be discovered in this way is better taken viva 



THE STUDY OF PROSE 137 

voce in recitation than swallowed from notes with- 
out even the trouble of asking. Much will be done, 
moreover, by the not unhealthy spirit of emulation 
which is sure to exist where the pupils are set to 
use their wits and to report the result in class. 
They will remember much better ; and, what in 
general education is of the very first importance, 
they will have admirable practice in the use of 
books of reference. Many difficulties must be ex- 
plained by the teacher ; but this, I insist, is better 
than the following of notes, a habit which is sure 
to degenerate into lifeless memorizing. The model 
text for school use would be cut in those few 
passages not suited for the school-room, would be 
clearly printed, and would be as free as possible 
from any outside matter whatever. In the case of 
poetry the ideal method would be to keep the text 
out of the hands of the student altogether until all 
work necessary to the mastering of the vocabulary 
had been done : but in practice such voluntary 
reading as a pupil chose to do beforehand would 
do no harm other than possibly to distract his 
attention from the learning of the meaning of 
words and phrases. In prose he will generally be 
in a key which allows the interruption of a pause 
for looking up words without much injury to the 
effect of the work. 

The study of prose is of course directed by the 
same principles as that of poetry, but the applica- 
tion is in school-work somewhat modified in details. 
In the first place the vocabulary of any prose used " 



138 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

in the schools is not likely to contain obsolete 
words such as are found in Shakespeare, and in 
the second place the length of a novel forbids its 
being read aloud in class in its entirety. I have 
taken my illustrations chiefly from books included 
in the College Requirements, because these books 
are the ones with which the majority of teachers 
are obliged to work. The Sir Roger de Coverley 
papers are sure to be taken up in any school-room 
where literature is studied to-day, and Burke " On 
Conciliation " is one of the inevitable obstacles in 
the way of every boy who wishes to enter college. 
Whatever the work, however, the important thing 
is that each pupil shall understand, shall appre- 
ciate, and shall connect what he reads with his 
own life. 

The order in which different works are taken up 
in class is a matter of much moment. No rules can 
be given arbitrarily to govern the arrangement of 
the readings, since much depends upon the indi- 
vidual class to be dealt with. On general principles, 
for instance, it might seem that Burke's " Speech," 
as being the least imaginative of the prescribed 
work, might well come first ; but on the other hand, 
the argument demands intellectual capacity and 
maturity which will often require that it be not 
put before a given group of scholars until they 
have had all the training they can gain from the 
other requirements. A teacher can hardly afford to 
have any rule in the whole treatment of literature 
which is not so flexible that it may be modified or 



THE STUDY OF PROSE 139 

disregarded entirely when circumstances require. 
The ideal method, perhaps, would be to give a class 
first a few short pieces as tests, and then to arrange 
their longer work upon the basis of the result. 

If the " Speech " is to be taken up first or last, 
it must be preceded by a clear understanding of the 
history of the conditions with which Burke dealt. 
This knowledge should have been obtained in the 
history class, and the use of facts obtained in an- 
other branch affords one of the opportunities for 
doing that useful thing which should be kept always 
in sight, the enforcing of the fact that all education 
is one, although for convenience of handling neces- 
sarily divided into various branches. If the class 
has not had the requisite instruction in history, 
the teacher of English is forced to pause and sup- 
ply the deficiency, as it is hopeless to try to go on 
without it. The argument of Burke is pretty tough 
work for any class of high-school students, and 
without familiarity with the circumstances which 
called it forth is utterly unintelligible. 

The vocabulary of Burke contains few words 
which need to be studied beforehand, and indeed it 
is perhaps better to treat the speech as so far a 
logical rather than an imaginative work that with- 
out other preparation than a thorough mastery of 
the circumstances under which it was delivered 
and of the political issues with which it dealt the 
class may be given the text directly. In the first 
reading the thing to be insured is the intelligent 
comprehension of the language and of the argument. 



140 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

In the first half-dozen paragraphs, for instance, 
such passages as these must be made perfectly 
clear : 

I hope, Sir, that notwithstanding the austerity of the 
Chair, your good nature will incline you to some degree 
of indulgence toward human frailty. 

The grand penal bill. 

Returned to us from the other House. 

We are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to 
make ourselves so) by any incongruous mixture of coer- 
cion and restraint. 

From being blown about by every wind of fashionable 
doctrine. 

This is clear enough in meaning, but the class 
should notice the suggestion of the biblical phrase 
which insinuates that a good deal of the political 
fluctuation which has complicated the question of 
the treatment of the colonies has been like the 
hysterical instability of those who run after every 
fresh eccentricity offered in the name of religion. 

I really did not think it safe or manly to have fresh 
principles to seek upon every fresh mail that should ar- 
rive from America. 

It is in your equity to judge. 

Parliament, having an enlarged view of objects. 

A situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not 
name. 

That the public tribunal (never too indulgent to a long 
and unsuccessful opposition) would now scrutinize our 
conduct with unusual severity. 

We must produce our hand. 

Somewhat disreputably. 



THE STUDY OF PROSE 141 

The whole oration is studded with passages such 
as these, and it is the habit of too many instruct- 
ors to expect the student to depend upon notes for 
the solution of such difficulties. I have already 
indicated that I believe this to be an unwise and 
weakening process ; and in a political document of 
this sort a drill for elucidating difficulties may well 
be undertaken when in an imaginative work more 
latitude may be allowed in the way of sliding over 
them. 

The reading of the speech as a whole could 
hardly be attempted with any profit until the class s 
has mastered its technicalities and its logic. The 
oration differs in this from more imaginative litera- 
ture. Here it is not only proper but necessary to 
make analysis part of the first reading. 

The class should for itself make a summary of 
the speech as it goes forward. For each paragraph 
should be devised a single sentence which gives 
clearly and concisely the thought, so that at the 
conclusion a complete skeleton shall have been 
made. Each student should make these sentences 
for himself as part of his preparation of a lesson, 
and from a comparison in the class the final form 
may be selected. Some of the school editions do 
this admirably, but one of two things seems to me 
indisputable: either the "Speech" is too difficult 
for students to handle or they should make their 
own summaries. To do this part of the work for 
them is to deprive the study of its most valuable 
element. The best justification such a selection 



142 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

can have for its inclusion in the list of required 
books is that it may fairly be used for this care- 
ful analytical work without prejudice to the effect 
of the piece as a whole. In other words, no objec- 
tion exists to treating this especial selection first 
from the purely intellectual point of view. To con- 
sider a play of Shakespeare first intellectually would 
seem to me utterly wrong ; but this argument of 
Burke is intentionally addressed to the reason ra- 
ther than to the imagination, and would therefore 
logically be so read. 

Beside the mere interpretation of difficult pass- 
ages, the pupil should be made to discern and to 
weigh the value and effect of the admirable sen- 
tences in which the orator has condensed whole 
trains of logic. 

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of 
fear. 

A wise and salutary neglect. 

The power of refusal, the first of all revenues. 

The voluntary flow of heaped-up plenty. 

All government — indeed, every human benefit and 
enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act — is 
founded on compromise and barter. 

The study of phrases of this sort is admirable train- 
ing for the reasoning faculties of the scholar, it 
educates the powers of reading, and it may be made 
a continuous lesson in the nature and value of lit- 
erary technique. Of this study of literary work- 
manship I shall speak later ; here it is sufficient 
to point the necessity at once and the advantage 



THE STUDY OF PROSE 143 

of dwelling on these vital thoughts so admirably 
expressed. 

By the time the oration has been gone through 
with, and a summary of each paragraph made in 
the class, a skeleton is ready from which the argu- 
ment may be considered as a whole. In some schools 
students will be able to criticise from an historical 
point of view, and any intelligent boy to whom 
the oration is given for study should be able to 
judge of the logic of the plea. 

If the " Speech " is to justify its claim to being 
literature in the higher sense, however, it is not pos- 
sible to stop with the intellectual study. The ques- 
tion of what constitutes literature is better taken 
up, it seems to me, near the end of the course of 
secondary work, if it is to come in at all ; but pre- 
paration for dealing with that question must come 
all along the line. When Burke has been studied 
for his political meanings, his argument summed 
up and examined, the intellectual force of the parts 
and of the whole sufficiently considered, then it is 
necessary to look at the imaginative qualities of 
the work. 

I would never set children to examine any piece 
of prose or verse for any qualities until I was sure 
they understood what they are to look for. If they 
are to examine the oration for imaginative pass- 
ages, they must first know clearly what an imagin- 
ative passage is. Here the previous training of the 
class is to be reckoned with. Some classes must 
be taught the significance of the term " imagin- 



144 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

ative " by having the passages pointed out to them 
and then analyzed ; others are so far advanced as to 
be able to discover them. The thing I wish to em- 
phasize is that when the simply intellectual study 
N has progressed far enough, the imaginative must 
follow. Passages which may be used here are such 
as these : 

My plan . . . does not propose to fill your lobby 
with squabbling colony agents, who will require the in- 
terposition of your mace at every instant to keep peace 
among them. It does not institute a magnificent auc- 
tion of finance, where captivated provinces come to 
general ransom by bidding against each other, until you 
knock down the hammer, and determine a proportion 
of payments beyond all powers of algebra to equalize 
and settle. 

Such is the strength with which population shoots in 
that part of the world, that, state the numbers as high 
as we will, whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration 
ends. 

Look at the manner in which the people of New Eng- 
land have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst 
we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and 
behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses 
of Hudson Bay and Davis Strait, whilst we are looking for 
them beneath the Arctic Circle, we hear that they have 
pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they 
are at the antipodes and engaged under the frozen Ser- 
pent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too 
remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national 
ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress 



THE STUDY OF PROSE 145 

of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat 
more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter 
of both poles. We know that while some of them draw 
the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, 
others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game 
along the coast of Brazil. No sea but is vexed by their 
fisheries. No climate that is not witness of their toils. 

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, 
and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. 

Passages of this sort are frequent in the speech, 
and it is not difficult to make the pupils not only 
recognize them, but appreciate the quality which 
distinguishes them from the matter-of-fact state- 
ments of figures, statistics, or other necessary in- 
formation. 

A step further is to make the class see how the 
imagination shows in a passage like the famous sen- 
tence : 

I do not know the method of drawing up an indict- 
ment against a whole people. 

These dozen or so words may profitably be made the 
subject for an entire lesson, and if this seem a pro- 
portionately extravagant amount of time to give to 
a single line, I can only say that to do one thing thor- 
oughly is not only better than to do a score super- 
ficially, but in the long run it is economy of time as 
well. If the class can be led to discuss the meaning 
of the phrase, and the principles upon which Burke 
rested the argument which is behind this superb 
proposition, not only will the hour have been well 



146 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

spent in developing the ideas of the students, but the 
whole oration will be wonderfully illuminated. When 
to this is added an adequate understanding of the 
imaginative grasp which seizes the personality of a 
whole nation, perceives its majesty, its sovereignty, 
and the impossibility of arraigning it before the bar 
like a criminal, the student is getting the best that 
the study of the oration can give him. 

Written work should be kept within the limits 
of the capability of the individual pupil to think 
intelligently. Perhaps the best means of enforcing 
upon a class the vigor of Burke's style at once and 
the completeness of the oration as a whole is that 
of requiring from each an expression, as clear and 
as exact as possible, of just what the orator wished 
to effect, and an estimate, as critical as the pupil 
is capable of making, of how the means employed 
were especially adapted to carry out his purpose. 
Such work will be useless if the teacher does the 
reasoning, but much may be elicited by skilful 
leading in recitation, and after the scholars have 
done all that they can do, the instructor may add 
his comment. 

After the " Speech on Conciliation " may reason- 
ably come, if the required list of readings is being 
followed, the " Sir Eoger de Coverley Papers." Here 
one deals with work more deliberately imaginative. 
Preparation for taking up these essays should begin 
with a brief account of the " Spectator " and of the 
circumstances under which they were written. The 
less elaborate this is the better, so long as it serves 



THE STUDY OF PROSE 147 

the purpose of giving the class some notion of the 
point of view ; and indeed it is to be doubted 
whether as a matter of fact any great harm would 
be done if even this were omitted. What is needed 
is to interest the class in the work, and facts about 
times and circumstances seldom effect much real 
good in this study. 

The vocabulary will give little trouble. It is 
well to be sure that the readers understand before- 
hand such words as may be rather remote from 
daily speech. In the account of the club (March 
2, 1710-11), for instance, the list given out for 
test might include such terms as these: baronet, 
country-dance, shire, humor, modes, Soho-square, 
quarter-sessions, game-act. In the first paragraph, 
from which these words are taken, are also two or 
three phrases which should be familiar before the 
reading is undertaken: "never dressed afterward," 
" in his merry humors," " rather beloved than es- 
teemed," and "justice of the quorum." The his- 
torical allusions, as represented by the names Lord 
Rochester, Sir George Etherege, and Dawson, go 
also into this preliminary study. 

The paper should be first read as a whole, with 
no other interruption than may come in the form 
of questions from the class. The teacher should 
make no effort at anything here but intelligent 
reading. Then the paper may be given out for 
careful study ; the form of this may be varied at 
the pleasure of the teacher and the needs of the 
class. The presentation of character is the point to be 



148 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

most strongly brought out, and this must be done 
delicately but as completely as possible. The " De 
Coverley Papers " necessarily seem to the modern 
youth extremely remote from actual life as he 
knows it, and the majority of Institute students 
with whom I have talked admit that they found 
Addison very quiet, or, in their own phrase, 
" slow." The characters are accordingly apt to 
appear to them dim and unreal ; to be hardly more 
alive than the figures on an ancient tapestry. This 
feeling cannot be wholly overcome, especially in 
the limited time which is at the command of the 
teacher of school literature, yet whatever vividness 
of impression a reader of the essays gets is di- 
rectly proportional to the extent to which Sir 
Eoger and his friends emerge from the land of 
shadows, and seem to the boys and girls genuine 
flesh and blood. The chief care of the instructor 
in dealing with these papers, the aim to which 
\ everything else should be subordinated, is to en- 
courage and to develop the sense of reality. The 
little touches by which the personality of the old 
knight is shown must be dwelt upon as each ap- 
pears ; and in the end a summary of these may be 
made as a means of stating briefly but clearly 
Sir Eoger 's character. Constantly, too, by means 
homely enough to be clearly and easily intelligible 
to the class, must each of these passages be con- 
nected with the personal experiences of the chil- 
dren. In the essay generally headed " Sir Eoger at 
Home," for instance, the author remarks : 



THE STUDY OF PROSE 149 

Sir Roger, who is very well acquainted with my 
humor, lets me rise and go to bed when I please ; dine 
at his own table, or in my chamber, as I think fit ; sit 
still, and say nothing, without bidding me be merry. 

The whole situation, that of a notable man's 
visit to a country squire, is utterly foreign to the 
pupil's probable experience. He can, however, be 
made to recall occasions in which he has been con- 
sidered and his wishes consulted. He may or may 
not as a guest have tested different forms of hos- 
pitality, but he easily decides how under given 
circumstances he would wish to be treated. From 
this he is without difficulty led to an appreciation 
of the consideration with which Sir Koger was 
intent not upon his own wishes or the ease of his 
household, but upon the pleasure of his guest. 
Few boys or girls can have come to the school age 
without understanding what a drawback to good 
spirits it is to be told to be merry, and they can 
appreciate the common sense of the knight in 
thinking of this, and his tact in not bothering his 
guest. The same thoughtful kindness is shown in 
the way Sir Roger protected his lion from sight- 
seers. Incidentally the point may be made in pass- 
ing that Addison humorously took this means of 
impressing on the reader of the " Spectator " the 
importance of the supposed writer. 

The best preparation a teacher can make for 
dealing with these essays is to get clearly into his 
own mind the personality, the characteristics, even 
the outward appearance of each of the characters 



150 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

dealt with. It is impossible to make these quiet 
and delicately drawn pictures real and alive unless 
we have for them a genuine love and a sense of 
acquaintance ; and I know of no method by which 
in practical work this can be communicated except 
by the vivifying of such passages as that quoted 
above. 

Each student should bring to the class a state- 
ment of what he regards as the chief thought in 
each paper as it comes up, — not the moral of the 
paper, but the chief end which the writer seems to 
have in view, the thought which most strongly 
strikes the reader. These opinions should be talked 
over in class, and from them one produced which 
at least the majority of the class are willing to 
accept. No pupil, however, should be discouraged 
from holding to his own original proposition, or 
from adopting a view at variance with that of the 
majority. 

Always if possible, — and personally I should 
make it possible, even at the sacrifice of other 
things, — the paper should last of all be read as 
a whole without interruption. The fact should 
always be kept before the minds of the pupils that 
the essay is not a collection of detached facts or 
thoughts, but that it is a whole, and that it can 
fairly be received only in its entirety. 

To stretch out illustrations of the teaching of 
particular books would only be tedious, and I trust 
I have done enough to make evident what I believe 



THE STUDY OF PROSE 151 

should be the spirit of work done in the " studying" 
of prose in the secondary schools. The matter is 
of comparative simplicity as contrasted with the 
handling of poetry ; and I have therefore reserved 
most of my space for the latter. No one knows 
better than I that any formal method is fatal to 
real and vital work ; and what I have written has 
been largely inspired by a knowledge that many 
instructors are at a loss to formulate any rational 
method at all, while others, I am forced sorrowfully 
to add, seem never even to have perceived that 
any method is possible. 



XII 

THE STUDY OF THE NOVEL 

Whatever may be the entrance requirements 
and whatever the prescribed course in the way of 
fiction, I should begin the study of the novel with 
a modern book. To hold the attention of the ma- 
jority of modern children long enough for them to 
form any adequate idea of the quality and charac- 
teristics of any work of the length of an ordinary 
novel, long enough for them to gain an idea which 
conceives of the work as a whole and not as a col- 
lection of detached scenes and scraps, is sufficiently 
difficult in any case. It should not be made more 
difficult by selecting as a text a book requiring 
effort in the understanding of vocabulary, point of 
view, setting, and the rest. " Ivanhoe " is good in 
its place, but it is not adapted to use as first aid 
to the untrained. It is probable that a class after 
sufficient experience in fiction may be able to handle 
" Silas Marner," and it is apparently fated by the 
powers that be that they must struggle with " The 
Vicar of Wakefield;" but they certainly need 
preliminary practice before they are set to grapple 
with those fictions so remote from their daily lives. 
They should begin with something as near their 
own world as possible ; and " Treasure Island," the 
scene laid in the land of boyhood's imaginings, is 



THE STUDY OF THE NOVEL 153 

an excellent example of the sort of story which 
may well be used to introduce them to the serious 
consideration of this branch of literature. 

A little preliminary talk may well precede the 
actual reading. The teacher should be sure that 
the class has a fair idea of what piracy is, — a 
matter generally of little difficulty, — and of the 
social conditions under which the tale begins. The 
actual geography of the romance need not be con- 
sidered much, although students lose nothing if they 
are trained to the habit of knowing accurately the 
location of such real places as are named in any 
story ; but the imaginary geography of the tale, 
the topography of the island, should be well mas- 
tered. Beyond this, the teacher should have pre- 
pared a list of words to be learned before any read- 
ing is done. This should include all those in the 
first assignment that are likely to bother the child 
in the first going over of the text. In the open- 
ing chapter, for instance, such words as these : 

Buccaneer (title of Part I). 

Capstan bars. 

Connoisseur. 

Dry Tortugas. 

Spanish Main. 

Hawker. 

Assizes. 

In this chapter are a couple of allusions to the 
costume of the time, but as they are intelligible 
only when taken as sentences they may be left for 
the reading in class : 



154 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

One of the cocks of his hat having fallen down. 
The neat, bright doctor, with his powder as white as 



When the class comes together the vocabulary- 
is to be taken up as a solid and distinct task, and 
after that is disposed of, the text may follow. It is 
generally impossible to give the time to the read- 
ing aloud of an entire novel ; but I am inclined to 
believe that at least the opening chapters, the por- 
tion of the story which must be most deliberately 
considered if the young reader is to go on with the 
tale in full possession of the atmosphere and the 
characters as they are introduced, should always 
be thus taken up. The portions assigned for each 
lesson must be brief at first, but may wisely increase 
as the interest grows and familiarity with person- 
ages and situations is enlarged. 

The first chapter, then, having been read aloud, 
the class may make a list of the characters intro- 
duced: Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, the old 
pirate not yet named, the father, the " I " who is 
telling the story. The seaman who brings the chest 
and the neighbors are obviously of no permanent 
importance. 

Of these characters the class should give orally 
so much of an impression as they have obtained 
from this chapter. This is simple with the buc- 
caneer, fairly easy in regard to Dr. Livesey and 
the inn-keeper, but more difficult in the case of the 
boy. The paragraph beginning : 

How that personage haunted my dreams, I need 
scarcely tell you — 



THE STUDY OF THE NOVEL 155 

and the opening sentence of the following para- 
graph : 

But though I was so terrified by the idea of the sea- 
faring man with one leg, I was far less afraid of the 
captain himself than anybody else who knew him — 

give admirable material for class discussion. The 
first should appeal to the children, who must be 
made to understand that to Jim Hawkins the one- 
legged seafaring man was not a mere idea, but an 
actual personage for whom he was set to watch, and 
of whom even the terrible old Billy Bones was 
mortally afraid. The second at once illustrates 
how the unknown was more frightful to the lad 
than the veritable flesh and blood pirate ; and it 
shows also by excellent contrast how terrifying the 
buccaneer was to the frequenters of the inn. 

For the second chapter the vocabulary would 
for most classes include such words as 

Cutlass. 
Talons. 
Chine. 
Lancet. 

The expressions which should be made clear in class 
would include : 

Cleared the hilt of his cutlass. 

Showed a wonderfully clean pair of heels. 

Fouled the tap. 

Stake my wig. 

Open a vein. 

This chapter has a number of delicate touches 
which should be brought to the notice of the class ; 



156 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

such as the lump in the throat of Black Dog while 
he waited for the pirate in moral terror ; his clever 
excuse for having the door left open apparently 
that he might be sure Jim was not listening, but in 
reality that he might have a way of escape in case of 
danger ; the picture of the gallows in the tattooing. 

The characters of Billy Bones and Jim are added 
to in the chapter, and that of the doctor made more 
clear. The touch by which the boy is made to feel 
compassion for the pirate when Bones turns so 
ghastly at the sight of Black Dog is one which 
should not be missed. The story, too, begins to de- 
velop, and the youthful reader must be unusually 
insensitive if he does not speculate upon the past 
of Bones and upon the relation of the pirate with 
Black Dog. 

It is not necessary to go on with this sort of 
analysis, for the method I am detailing must be 
essentially that of most teachers. If the points 
mentioned seem to some over-minute, I can only 
say that since the aim is to teach children how 
to handle fiction, the task of training them to be 
intelligently careful in their reading is of the first 
importance. There is no risk of making them fin- 
ical or too minutely observant. This is moreover 
the study of a novel, and it should be more careful 
than reading is supposed to be. It is morally 
certain that any child will fall below the standard 
set, and it is therefore necessary to have the stand- 
ard as high as it can be without tiring or confusing 
the children. 



THE STUDY OF THE NOVEL 157 

When the book has been gone through in this 
way comes the important question of dealing with 
it as a whole. It would hardly be wise to ask chil- 
dren directly what they think of a book as a com- 
plete work; and yet that is the thing at which 
the teacher wishes to arrive. The way has been 
prepared by the study of character and the dis- 
cussion of incident throughout. In the end the 
subject of character as it is seen from the begin- 
ning of the tale to the close may easily lead the 
way to making up some estimate of the book as 
a unit. First, do the persons in the romance act 
consistently ; second, do the incidents follow along 
so that they seem really to have happened. These 
questions will at first have a tendency to bewilder 
young readers, who are likely to accept anything 
in a romance as if it were true, and to have no 
judgment beyond the matter whether the book 
does or does not interest them. It is not to be ex- 
pected that they will go very deep or be very broad 
in their dealing with such points in the case of a 
first novel, but they can make a beginning. They 
cannot in the book in question go far in what is 
the natural third question concerning a book as a 
whole : Does it show clearly and truly the develop- 
ment of character under the circumstances of the 
story. Jim Hawkins is at the end of the book 
manifestly older and more manly than at the start, 
as shown, for instance, by his refusal to break his 
word to Silver when the doctor talks with him 
over the stockade and urges him to come away with 



158 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

him. With the other characters it is more the 
bringing out of traits already existing than the 
developing of new ones. John Silver is of course 
by far the most masterly figure in the book — al- 
though the student should be allowed to have his 
own idea in regard to this. Indeed, one of the 
ways in which he judges and should judge a book 
as a whole is by deciding what personage in it 
is, all things considered and the story taken all 
through, most clearly and sharply defined. The 
class should be able to see and to appreciate how 
the tale as it progresses brings to light one phase 
after another of the amazing character of Silver, 
up to his pluck at the moment when the treasure- 
seekers discover that the gold has been taken away 
from the cache and to his humble attitude toward 
the Squire when the cave of Ben Gunn is reached. 
Lastly, perhaps, — for I do not insist upon the 
order in which these points should be taken up, but 
only give them in the sequence which to me seems 
likely to be most natural and effective, — the class 
should be brought to appreciate the construction 
of the book. This involves obviously the way in 
which the author weaves together incidents so that 
each shall have a part in the general scheme ; but 
it also involves the way in which he brings out the 
part that the individual traits and character of the 
persons in the story had in leading up to the end. 
In " Treasure Island," for instance, it is easy to 
show how one thing leads to another, and how out 
of the chain no link could be taken without break- 



THE STUDY OF THE NOVEL 159 

ing the continuity. This should not be impressed 
upon the class, however, as a matter of invention 
on the part of the author. Children know that the 
book is a fiction, but they prefer to ignore this. It 
is not well to make the fact part of the instruction. 
The way to handle this is to dwell upon the skill 
with which he has arranged particulars, and passed 
in his narrative from one party to another so as 
to have each incident clear. Pupils may be reminded 
of how easy it is to mix the details of a story so 
as to confuse the hearer or the reader, and thus may 
be made to appreciate to some degree the clever- 
ness of the workmanship which so distinguishes 
the work of Stevenson. 

More subtle in a way and yet not beyond the 
comprehension of the school-boy is the part which 
character plays in shaping events and moulding the 
story. The restlessness and the curiosity of Jim, 
from the adventure of the apple-barrel to the saving 
of the ship, are essentials in the tale ; and equally 
the diabolical cleverness and unscrupulousness of 
Silver shape the events of the story from begin- 
ning to end. 

One more illustration may be taken from the 
novel which is so generally included in high-school 
English, Scott's " Ivanhoe." Here it is necessary to 
prepare for the story by the acquirement of a cer- 
tain amount of history. It is perhaps as well to 
take the first five 1 paragraphs of the opening chap- 

1 Five in the original. Some school editions, for what reason 
I do not know, omit paragraph five, which "begins : " This state 
of things I have thought it necessary to premise.'' 



160 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

ter as a preliminary lesson, and to treat it as his- 
tory pure and simple. In preparation for this lesson 
the following vocabulary should be mastered : 

Dragon of Wantley. 

Wars of the Roses. 

Vassalage. 

Inferior gentry, or franklins. 

Feudal. 

The Conquest. 

Duke William of Normandy. 

Normans. 

Anglo-Saxons. 

Battle of Hastings. 

Laws of the chase. 

Chivalry. 

Hinds. 

Classical languages. 

A few other expressions, such as "petty kings," 
should be looked after in the reading, lest the class 
get a false impression. The geography of the river 
Don and of Don caster may be passed over; but it 
is perhaps better, especially in this historical prelim- 
inary, to require full accuracy in this particular. 
To my thinking all this should be looked up by 
the students, and never taken from notes appended 
to the text. 

The five paragraphs in which Scott gives the 
historic background should be taken frankly as a 
piece of work out of which the class is to make as 
clear a conception of the period of the tale as pos- 
sible. The pupils should use their common sense 
and their intelligence in studying it, getting all out 



THE STUDY OF THE NOVEL 161 

of it that they can get. Then it should be read 
aloud in the class, and carefully gone over. The 
aim should be to have understood as clearly as pos- 
sible what were the political and the social con- 
ditions of the time when the events of the romance 
are represented as taking place. Such other historic 
personages as enter into the story without being 
mentioned in this preliminary sketch should be 
brought into this exposition. Thus when King 
Richard and Prince John and Robin Hood the 
semi-historic come upon the stage the student will 
be prepared for the effect which the novelist in- 
tended, and will have, moreover, that pleasure 
which a young reader always feels in finding him- 
self equal to an occasion. 

This preliminary work being accomplished, the 
rest of the book will probably have to be largely 
assigned for home reading. The opening chapters, 
however, and the most striking scenes must cer- 
tainly be read aloud in class. A sufficient portion 
for a lesson will be assigned each day. A list of 
words for that portion will be given out with it to 
be learned first. No teacher will suppose, I fancy, 
that in every case a student will master the vocab- 
ulary before he reads the selection, but the prin- 
ciple is sound and the words would at least be all 
taken up in class before any reading is done. Stu- 
dents should be told to read the selection aloud at 
home, and should come to the class acquainted with 
the meaning and significance of each passage, or 
prepared to ask about them. 



162 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

At the beginning of the novel, when the reader 
is learning the situation and the characters con- 
cerned, the assignments must be shorter than in 
the latter part of the book, when these things are 
understood and the current of the tale runs more 
swiftly. The remainder of the first chapter, from 
the paragraph beginning " The sun was setting " 
is quite enough for a first instalment. The follow- 
ing words make up the preliminary vocabulary: 

Rites of druidical superstition. 

Scrip. 

Bandeau. 

Harlequin. 

Rational. 

Quarter-staff. 

Murrain. 

Eumseus. 

The method of treating the fiction itself has been 
sufficiently indicated in the previous illustration 
from " Treasure Island," but may be briefly touched 
upon. In this chapter of " Ivanhoe " are intro- 
duced two characters. Both are described at some 
length, but in the case of both important touches 
here and there add to the impression. Gurth is 
said at the beginning to be stern and sad, and in 
the talk the reasons come out. 

" The mother of mischief confound the Ranger of the 
forest, that cuts the foreclaws off our dogs, and makes 
them unfit for their trade." 

" Little is left us but the air we breathe, and that ap- 
pears to have been reserved with much hesitation, solely 



THE STUDY OF THE NOVEL 163 

for the purpose of enabling us to endure the tasks they 
lay upon our shoulders." 

We have a proof of his impulsiveness in the danger- 
ous freedom with which he speaks to Wamba, and 
of how daring this is we are made aware when the 
jester says to him : 

" I know thou thinkest me a fool, or thou wouldst not 
be so rash in putting thy head into my mouth. One 
word to Reginald Front-de-Bceuf . . . thou wouldst 
waver on one of these trees as a terror to all evil speak- 
ers against dignities." 

Of the superstition of Gurth we have proof by 
his fear at the mention of the fairies. 

" Wilt thou talk of such things while a terrible storm 
of thunder and lightning is raging within a few miles 
of us?" 

Here is a fairly satisfactory portrait of Gurth, 
although other traits of character are developed as 
the book goes forward. At the end of the novel 
the attention of the class may be directed to the 
skilful way in which at the very start Scott has 
struck in the words of Gurth the keynote of the 
oppression of the Normans and the hatred for them 
in the hearts of the Saxons ; but a point of this 
sort should not be anticipated. It will tell for 
more if it is left until it has had its full effect and 
its place as a part of the whole romance may be 
clearly shown. 

One last word I cannot bring myself to omit. I 
have said elsewhere that I disbelieve in the draw- 



164 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

ing of morals, and at the risk of repetition I wish 
to emphasize this in connection with fiction. The 
temptation here is especially strong. It is so easy 
to draw a moral from any tale ever written that 
two classes of teachers, those morally over-con- 
scientious and those ignorantly inept, are almost 
sure to insist that their classes shall drag a moral 
lesson out of every story. The habit seems to me 
thoroughly vicious. It is proper to make the char- 
acter of the persons in the novel as vivid as possible. 
The villain may be made as hateful to God and to 
man as the testimony of the author will in any 
way allow; but when that is done the children 
should be left to draw their own morals. They 
should not even be allowed to know that the teacher 
is aware that a moral may be drawn, and still less 
should they be asked to discover one. If they draw 
a moral themselves or ask questions about one, this 
is well, so long as they are sincere and spontane- 
ous. If they are left entirely to themselves in this 
they will in a healthy natural fashion get from the 
story such moral instruction as they are capable 
of profiting by, and they will not be put into that 
antagonistic attitude which human nature inevit- 
ably takes when it is preached to. 



XII 

THE STUDY OF « MACBETH " 

How I conceive the study of poetry may be 
managed in school-work I have already indicated 
somewhat fully, but one concrete example is often 
worth a dozen abstract statements. In the literary 
work of almost every high school is now included 
the study of at least one Shakespearean play, and as 
" Macbeth " is so generally selected as the one to be 
first taken up, I have chosen that as an illustration. 

The study of any play, as I have said, should 
begin with a requirement that the class master the 
vocabulary. The pupils should be made to under- 
stand that the need of doing this is precisely the 
same as the need of learning common speech for 
the sake of comprehending the talk of every-day 
life, or of mastering the vocabulary of French be- 
fore going to the theatre to hear a play in that 
language. The scholars should be told frankly that 
this will not be particularly easy work, but that it 
is to be taken in the same spirit that one learned 
the multiplication-table. No harm can come of let- 
ting the class expect this part of the work to be 
full harder than it really is, and at least it is well 
to have students understand that they are expected 
to labor to fit themselves for the enjoyment of lit- 
erature. 



166 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

In this preparation the aim is to make it possible 
for the readers to go on with the text without import- 
ant interruptions. This purpose determines what 
words and passages shall be taken up. Some diffi- 
culties may safely and wisely be left for the second 
reading of the play, and as it is well in these days 
not to expect too much of the industry of youth, 
the teacher will do well to keep the list of words 
to be mastered as short as may be. The whole play 
should be prepared for before any of it is read, but 
I give only examples from the first act. I should 
suggest — each teacher to vary the list at his pleas- 
ure — that in the first act the following words 
should be dealt with. The numbers of the lines 
are those of the Temple Edition. 

Alarum. This occurs in the stage-directions of 
scene ii. The class will see at once that it differs 
from " alarm," and can be made to appreciate how 
from the strong rolling of the r — " alarr'm " came 
to this form. That the latter form is now used in 
the sense of a warning sound, and especially in the 
sense of a sound of trumpet or drum to announce 
the coming of a military body or the escort of im- 
portance affords a good example of the manner in 
which synonyms are established in the language. 
A quotation or two may help to fix the word in 
mind : 

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings — 
"Richard III," i, 1. 

And when she speaks, is it not an alarum to love ? — 
" Othello," ii, 3. 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 167 

The dread alarum should make the earth quake to its 
centre. — Hawthorne, " Old Manse." 

Kerns and gallowglasses, ii, 13. It may be 
enough to give simply the fact that the first of 
these uncouth words means light-armed and the 
second heavy-armed Irish troops. If the teacher 
likes, however, he may add a brief mention of the 
passage from Barnabie Riehe : 

The Galloglas succeedeth the Horseman, and hee is 
commonly armed with a skull, 1 a shirt of maile, and a 
Galloglas axe ; his service in the field is neither good 
against horsemen, nor able to endure an encounter of 
pikes, yet the Irish do make great account of them. 
The Kerne of Ireland are next in request, the very 
drosse and scum of the countrey, a generation of 
villaines not worthy to live : these be they that live by 
robbing and spoiling the poor countreyman, that maketh 
him many times to buy bread to give unto them, though 
he want for himself and his poore children. These are 
they that are ready to run out with every rebell, and 
these are the very hags of hell, fit for nothing but for 
the gallows. — New Irish Prognostication. 

Thane, ii, 45. This word may be made interest- 
ing by its close connection witb the Anglo-Saxon. 
Thegan was originally a servant, then technically 
the king's servant, and so an Anglo-Saxon noble- 
man and one of the king's more immediate warriors. 

Bellona, ii, 54. The mythological allusion is of 
course easy to handle. 

Composition, ii, 59. This I would include in 
the list chiefly to emphasize how often a little com- 

1 A metal covering for the head : a helmet. 



168 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

mon sense will solve what at first sight seems a 
difficulty of language. " Craves composition " is so 
easily connected with " composing difficulties " or 
any similar phrase that an intelligent pupil can 
see the point if he is only alive to the force of 
language. 

Aroint, Hi, 6. It will interest most scholars to 
learn that this word — except for modern imita- 
tions — is found only in Shakespeare, and in him 
but twice, both times in the phrase " Aroint thee, 
witch " (the second instance, " Lear," Hi, 4). They 
will be at least amused by the possibility of its 
being derived from a dialect word given in the 
Cheshire proverb quoted by an old author named 
Eay in 1693, and probably in use in the time of 
Shakespeare : " « Rynt you, witch,' quoth Bessie 
Locket to her mother ; " and in the speculation 
whether the dramatist himself made the word. The 
curious derivation of the term from rauntree or 
rantry, the old form of rowan, or mountain-ash, is 
sure to appeal to children who have seen the rowan 
ripening its red berries. The mountain-ash, or the 
" quicken," as it is called in Ireland, is one of the 
most famous trees in Irish tradition, and is sacred 
to the " Gentle People," the fairies. It was of old 
regarded as a sure defence against witches, and the 
theory of some scholars is that the original form of 
the exclamation given by Shakespeare was " I 've a 
rauntree, witch," " I Ve a rowan-tree, witch." All 
that it is necessary for the reader to know is that the 
word is evidently a warning to the witch to depart ; 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 169 

but there can be no objection to introducing into 
this preliminary study of the vocabulary matter 
which is likely to arrest attention and to fix mean- 
ings in the mind. 

Rump-fed ronyon, Hi, 6. It is hardly worth while 
to do more with this than to have it understood 
that "ronyon" is a term of contempt, meaning 
scabby or something of the sort, and that " rump- 
fed," while it may refer to the fact that kidneys, 
rumps, and scraps were perquisites of the cook or 
given to beggars, probably indicates nothing more 
than a plump, over-fed woman. 

Pent-house lid, iii, 20. A pent-house is from 
the dictionary found to be a sloping roof projecting 
from a wall over a door or window ; and from this 
to the comparison with the eyebrow is an easy step. 
That the simile was common in the sixteenth cen- 
tury may be shown by numerous quotations, as, for 
instance, the passage in Thomas Decker's " Gull's 
Horne-book," 1609 : 

The two eyes are the glasse windows, at which light 
disperses itself into every roome, having goodlie pent- 
houses of hair to overshadow them. 

In the second chapter of " Ivanhoe " : 

Had there not lurked under the pent-house of his 
eye that sly epicurean twinkle. 

And so on down to our own time, when Tennyson, 
in " Merlin and Vivian," writes : 



170 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

He dragged his eyebrow bushes down, and made 
A snowy pent-house for his hollow eyes. 

Insane root, Hi, 84. In Plutarch's " Lives," 
which in the famous translation of North was 
familiar to Shakespeare and from which he took 
material for his plays, we are told that the soldiers 
of Anthony in the Parthian war were forced by 
lack of provisions to " taste of roots that were 
never eaten before ; among which was one that 
killed them, and made them out of their wits." 
Any intelligent student would be likely to under- 
stand the force of this phrase from the context, 
but it is well to speak of it beforehand to avoid 
distraction of the attention in reading. 

Coign, vi, 7. " Jutty," from our common use 
of the verb " to jut," carries its own meaning, and 
the use of the word " coign " in this passage is given 
in the " Century Dictionary." 

Sewer, vii, stage-directions. The derivation and 
the meaning are also given in the " Century Dic- 
tionary," with illustrative quotations. 

So far for single words which would be likely 
to bother the ordinary student in reading. The 
list might be extended by individual teachers to fit 
individual cases, and such words included as choppy, 
Hi, 44 ; blasted, Hi, 77 ; procreant, vi, 8 ; har- 
binger, iv, 45 ; flourish, iv, end ; martlet, vi, 4 ; 
God 'ield, vi, 13 ; trammel up, mi, 3 ; limbec, vii, 
67. It is well, however, not to make the list longer 
than is absolute necessary ; and as the vocabulary 
of the whole play is to be taken up, it is better to 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 111 

trust to the general intelligence of the class as far 
as possible. 

II 

These doubtful or obsolete words having been 
mastered by the class, and the lines in which they 
occur used as illustrations of their use, the next 
matter is to take up obscure passages. These may 
be blind from unusual use of familiar words or 
from some other cause. Where the difficulty is a 
matter of diction it is hardly worth while to make 
further division into groups, and in the first act 
the following passages may be given to the students 
to study out for themselves if possible, or to have 
explained by the teacher if necessary : 

Say to the king the knowledge of the broil 
As thou did leave it. — ii, 6. 

For brave Macbeth — well he deserves that name — 

Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel 

Which smoked with bloody execution, 

Like valour's minion carved out his passage 

Till he faced the slave ; 

Which ne'er shook hands, nor bid farewell to him, 

Till he unseam'd him from the nave to chaps, 

And fix'd his head upon our battlements. — ii, 16-23. 

Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds, 
Or memorize another Golgotha, 
I cannot tell. — ii, 39-41. 

Till that Bellond's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof , 
Confronted him with self-comparisons, 
Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm, 
Curbing his lavish spirit. — ii, 54-57. 



172 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 
He shall live a man forbid. — Hi, 21. 

The weird sisters, hand in hand, 

Posters of the sea and land. — Hi, 32, 33. 

Art not without ambition, but without 
The illness should attend it. — v, 20-21. 

All that impedes thee from the golden round 
That fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 
To have thee crowned withal. — v, 30-31. 

To beguile the time 
Look like the time. — vi, 63. 

— Those honors deep and broad wherewith 
Your majesty loads our house : for those of old 
And the late dignities heap'd up to them 
We rest your hermits. — vi, 16-20. 

This Duncan 
Hath borne his faculties so meek. — vii, 16-17. 

What cannot you and I perform upon 
The unguarded Duncan ? what not put upon 
His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt 
Of our great quell. — vii, 69-72. 

This list again may be made longer or shorter, 
with the same proviso as before, that it be not un- 
necessarily distended. Phrases like " craves com- 
position " and " insane root," which I have put 
into the first section, maybe grouped here if it 
seems better. I have not felt it needful to indicate 
the way in which the meaning of these obscure 
passages is to be brought out, for the method would 
be essentially the same as that taken to interest the 
class in the vocabulary of detached words. 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 173 

III 

Passages possibly obscure from the thought may 
for the most part be left for the later study of the 
play in detail. A few of them it is well to take up 
for the simple purpose of training the student in 
poetic language, and some need to be understood 
for the sake of the first general effect. In the first 
act of " Macbeth " the passages which it is actually 
necessary to examine are few, but the list may be 
made long or short at the pleasure of the teacher. 
The following may serve as examples : 

The merciless Macdonwald — 
Worthy to be a rebel, for to that 
The multiplying villainies of nature 
Do swarm upon him. — ii, 9-12. 

As whence the sun 'gins his reflection 
Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break, 
So from that spring whence comfort seem'd to come 
Discomfort swells. — ii, 25-28. 

But thither in a sieve I '11 sail, 

And like a rat without a tail, 

I '11 do, I '11 do and I '11 do. — m, 8-10. 

This passage is a good example of what may be 
passed over in the first reading, yet which if under- 
stood adds greatly to the force of the effect. If 
the scholar knows that according to the old super- 
stition a witch could take the form of an animal 
but could be identified by the fact that the tail 
was wanting, the idea of the hag's flying through 
the air on the wind to the tempest-tossed vessel 
bound for Aleppo, and on it taking the form of a 



174 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

tailless rat to gnaw, and gnaw, and gnaw till the 
ship springs aleak, is sure to appeal to the youthful 
imagination. 

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, 
Shakes so my single state of man that function 
Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is 
But what is not. — m, 139-142. 

This is one of those passages which is sure to puz- 
zle the ordinary school-boy, although a little help 
will enable him to understand it, and to see how 
natural under the circumstances is the state of 
mind which it paints. The murder is as yet only 
imagined (fantastical), and yet the thought of it 
so shakes Macbeth's individual (single) conscious- 
ness (state of man) that the ordinary functions of 
the mind are lost in confused surmises of what may 
come as the consequences of the deed ; until to his 
excited fancy nothing seems real (is) but what the 
dreadful surmise paints, although that does not yet 

exist. 

Your servants ever 
Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt 
To make their audit to your highness' pleasure, 
Still to return your own. — vi, 25-28. 

His two chamberlains 
Will I with wine and wassail so convince, 
That memory, the warder of the brain, 
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason 
A limbec only. — vii, 63-67. 

The whole of Macbeth's soliloquy at the begin- 
ning of scene vii is a case in point. It may be 
taken up here, but to my thinking is better treated 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 175 

after the class is familiar with the circumstances 
under which it is spoken. 

IV 

The taking up of especially striking passages be- 
forehand may be omitted altogether, although what 
I consider the possible advantages I have already 
indicated. 1 Perhaps the better plan is to do this 
after the first reading of the play, and before the 
second reading prepares the way for detailed study. 
The sort of passage I have in mind is indicated by 
the following examples : 

If you can look into the seeds of time, 
And say which grain will grow and which will not. — 

Hi, 58-59. 

The attention of the pupils may be called to the 
especial force and fitness of the image. The impos- 
sibility of telling from the appearance of a seed 
whether it will grow or what will spring from it 
makes very striking this comparison of events to 
them, so unable are we to say which of these " seeds 
of time " will produce important results and which 
will show no more growth than a seed unsprouting. 

Dun. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air 
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
Unto our gentle senses. 

Ban. This guest of summer, 

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve 
By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath 
Smells wooingly here. — vi, 1-7. 

1 Page 80. 



176 TALKS OX TEACHING LITERATURE 

This is not only charming as poetry, but it is ex- 
cellent as a help to train the class to appreciative 
reading by attention to significant details. ; - Nim- 
bly,"' — with, a light, quick motion. — the air '-re- 
commends itself," — comes upon us in a way which 
makes us appreciate its goodness, — unto our 
t; gentle," — delicate, capable of perceiving subtle 
qualities, — senses. In the reply of Banquo the 
use of ;i guest," one favored and invited, of ' ; tem- 
ple-haunting." conveying the idea of one frequent- 
ing places consecrated and revered, of ;; loved man- 
sionry," dwellings which the eye loves to recognize, 
all help to strengthen the impression, and to give 
the feeling to the mind which we might have from 
watching the flight of the slim, glossy swallows 
flitting about their nests. 

It is not necessary to multiply examples, since each 
teacher will have his personal preferences for strik- 
ing passages : and since many will probably prefer 
to leave this whole matter to be taken up in the 
reading. 



The first reading of a play, whether it come be- 
fore or after the mastering of the vocabulary, should 
be unbroken except by the pauses necessary be- 
tween consecutive recitations, and must above every- 
thing be clear and intelligible. In all but the most 
exceptional circumstances it should be done by the 
teacher, the class following the text in books of 
their own. Xo teacher who cannot read well has 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 111 

any business to attempt to teach literature at all, 
for reading aloud is the most effective of all means 
to be used in the study. This does not mean that 
the reading should be over- dramatic, and still 
less that it should be what is popularly known as 
" elocutionary ; " but it does mean that it shall be 
agreeable, intelligent, and sympathetic. The teacher 
must both understand and feel the work, and must 
be trained to convey both comprehension and emo- 
tion through the voice. The pupils will from a first 
reading get chiefly the plot, but they may also be 
unconsciously prepared for the more important 
knowledge of character which is naturally the next 
step in the process of studying the drama. 

As preparation for the first reading of "Macbeth" 
little is needed in the way of general explanation. 
The discussion of the supernatural element, of the 
responsibility of the characters, and of the central 
thought of the play, may safely be left for later 
study. Young people will respond to the direct 
story, and it is not unwise to let the plot produce 
its full effect as simple narrative. It is well to 
state beforehand how it comes that the kingship 
does not necessarily go by immediate descent, and 
so to make it evident how Macbeth secured the 
throne ; it may be well also to comment briefly on 
the state of society in which crime was more pos- 
sible than now ; but beyond this the play may be 
left to tell its own tale. 

In this first reading the teacher will do well to 
indicate such points of stage-setting as are not evi- 



178 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

dent, and such stage " business " as is necessary to 
the understanding of the scene. It is as well, how- 
ever, not to give too much stress to this. To follow 
the play of emotions is with children instinctive, 
and this they will do without dwelling on the de- 
tails of the scene too closely in a material sense. 
At least a very little aid will be sufficient at this 
stage. In a subsequent reading these matters may 
be more fully brought out, although I am convinced 
that even then it is easy to overdo the insisting 
upon aids to visualization. 

What may be done and should not be omitted is 
the interspersion in passing of comments so brief 
that they do not interrupt, yet which throw light 
upon meanings which might otherwise be likely to 
pass unnoticed. Nothing should be touched upon 
in this way which is so complicated as to require 
more than a word or two to make it plain. What 
I mean is illustrated by these examples : 

I come Graymalkin. 
Paddock calls. — i, 9, 10. 

The voice in reading conveys the idea that the 
witches speak to familiar spirits in the air, but it 
is well to state that fact explicitly. 

What, can the devil speak true ? — Hi, 107. 

Banquo thinks instantly of the word of the witches, 

Glamis, and thane of Cawdor, etc. — Hi, 111-119. 

In these lines and in 126-147, it is of so much 
importance that the distinction between the asides 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 179 

and the direct speech be appreciated that it may 
be well to call attention to the changes. 

Cousins, a word, I pray you. — m, 126. 

Banquo draws the others aside, probably to tell 
them of the prediction by the witches of the news 
they have brought, and this gives Macbeth a mo- 
ment by himself to think of the strangeness of it. 

Think upon what hath chanced. — Hi, 153. 

This is said, of course, to Banquo. 

We will establish our estate upon 
Our eldest son, Malcolm. — iv, 37. 

Here the conditions of succession already spoken 

of may be alluded to, and the fact noted that if 

Macbeth had entertained any hopes of succeeding 

Duncan legitimately, these were now dispelled. 

And when goes hence ? — v, 60. 

The sinister suggestion of this may well be empha- 
sized by calling attention to it. 

By your leave, hostess. — vi, 31. 

With these words Duncan, who has taken the hand 
of Lady Macbeth, turns to lead her in. 

VI 

Once the play has been read as a whole the way 
has been prepared for more careful attention to 
details. For each recitation the parts should be 
assigned beforehand for oral reading, three or four 
pupils being assigned to each part so that in a long 
scene opportunity is given for bringing a number 



180 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

of the students to their feet. 1 It is well to prepare 
for this second reading by selecting the central 
motive of the play, and having the class discuss it. 
In the case of " Macbeth "it is easy to select am- 
bition as the main thread. In some plays a single 
passion or emotion is not so easily detached, but it 
is generally needful to remember that if children 
are to be impressed and are to see things clearly, 
they must be dealt with simply ; so that even at 
the expense of slighting for the time being some 
of the strands it is well to keep to the principle of 
naming one and holding to it with straightforward- 
ness until the work is tolerably familiar. 

The children should be made to say — not to 
write, for contagion of ideas is of the greatest im- 
portance here — what they understand by ambi- 
tion, how far they have noticed it in others, and 
perhaps how far felt it themselves. A wise teacher 
should have little difficulty in making such a talk 
personal enough to enforce the idea without letting 
it become too intimate. It can be brought out that 
the test of ambition is the extent of the sacrifices 
one is willing to make to gratify it. The ambition 
already spoken of to excel in class, to be at the 
head of the school baseball nine or football team, 
to be popular with friends, and so on for the com- 
mon ambitions of life may seem trifling, but it be- 
longs to the language of the child's life. Here and 
there the teacher finds pupils who might seize the 

1 Personally I would never have a pupil recite except on his 
feet. 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 181 

conception of ambition without starting so near 
the rudiments, but most need it ; I am unable to 
see how any can be hurt by it. It is much more 
difficult to get a conception vividly into the minds 
of twenty pupils together than it is to impress the 
same thing upon a hundred separately, and I should 
never feel that I could afford to neglect the hum- 
blest means which might be serviceable. The talk, 
moreover, does not stop here. It is to be led on to 
what the boys and girls would wish to be in the 
world ; and from this to historic instances of what 
men have done to gratify their ambitions. The 
assassination of the late King of Servia is still so 
recent as to seem much more real than murders 
farther back in history, and it lends itself well to 
the effort to make vital the tragedy that is being 
studied. I am not for an instant urging that liter- 
ature shall be treated in too realistic a manner, 
as I hope to show before I conclude ; but I do not 
feel that there is any fear of making it too real to 
the boys and girls with whom one must deal to-day 
in our schools. 

It is perhaps well, too, that some comment should 
be made at this stage on the supernatural element. 
A class is likely to have had geometry by the time 
it has come to the study of Shakespeare, and most 
children can with very little difficulty be made to 
understand that in " Macbeth " and " The Ancient 
Mariner " the existence of the supernatural is the 
hypothesis upon which the work proceeds. When 
this is understood it is not amiss to develop the 



182 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

idea that Shakespeare perhaps introduced the 
witches as a way of showing how evil thoughts 
and desires spring up in the heart. The class will 
easily see that the ideas of ambition, of the possi- 
bility of gaining the crown, which little by little 
grew in the heart of Macbeth can be better shown 
to an audience by putting the words into the mouths 
of the witches than by means of soliloquies. This 
giving of reasons why the dramatist does one thing 
or another should not be pressed too far and should 
be touched upon with caution. It is often better 
to let a detail go unremarked than to run the risk 
of confusing the mind of the pupil. The witches, 
however, are almost sure to be remarked upon, and 
they must be considered frankly. 

In this second reading such obscure passages as 
have been glided over before are to be taken into 
consideration. If the pupils have, as they should 
have, texts unencumbered with notes, they may be 
given a scene or two at a time, and told to use 
their wits in elucidating the difficulties. Often 
they show surprising intelligence in this line, and 
the bestowal of praise where it is deserved is one of 
the most effective as well as one of the pleasantest 
parts of the whole process. What they cannot eluci- 
date alone, they may be if possible helped to work 
out in class, or, if this fails, may be told outright. 
If they have tried to arrive at the true meaning, 
they are in a condition when an explanation will 
have its best and fullest effect. 

Passages in the first act of " Macbeth " which 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 183 

I have thus far passed over deliberately, to the 
end that the pupil be not bothered over too many 
difficulties at once, are such as these : 

Fair is foul, and foul is fair, — i, 11. 

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky 

And fan our people cold. — ii, 49, 50. 

Nor would we deign him burial of his men 

Till he disbursed, at Saint Colme's inch. — ii, 59, 60. 

Ten thousand dollars, — ii, 62. 

If, as is likely to be the case, the greater part or 
all of the class have passed the word " dollars " 
without notice, that fact serves to illustrate the 
need of care in reading. That they should pass it, 
moreover, illustrates also how the anachronism 
might pass unnoticed in Shakespeare's time, when 
historical accuracy was the last thing about which 
a playwright bothered his head. The teacher may 
well here refer back to the idea of considering lit- 
erature as the algebra of the emotions, and remind 
the class that as the poet was not endeavoring to 
write history or to tell what happened in a concrete 
instance, but only to represent the abstract prin- 
ciple of such a situation as that in which Macbeth 
and his wife were involved, a departure from his- 
torical accuracy is of no importance so long as it 
does not disturb the effect on the mind of the au- 
dience or reader. 

No more that thane of Cawdor shall receive 
Our bosom interest. — ii, 63, 64. 
I '11 give thee a wind. — Hi, 11. 

The supposed power of the witches to control the 



184 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

winds and the superstitions of the sailors about 
buying favorable weather from them may be taken 
up in the first reading ; but it seems better to 
leave it for the time when the effect of the play as 
a whole has been secured, and the interruption will 
be less objectionable. 

His wonders and his praises do contend 

Which should be thine or his : silenced with that. 

— Hi, 63. 
That, trusted home. — m, 120. 
Poor and single business. — vi, 16. 
Like the poor cat i' the adage. — vii, 45. 

It is not necessary to continue this list. Its 
length is decided by the one fixed principle to 
which is no exception : it is too long the moment 
the teacher fails to hold the interest of the class in 
the work which is being done. No amount of infor- 
mation acquired or skill in passing examinations can 
compensate for the harm done by associating the 
plays of Shakespeare in the minds of the student 
with the idea of dulness or boredom. 

Textual explanation, however, is of small import- 
ance as compared to an intelligent grasp of the 
office and effect of each incident and each scene in 
the development of the story and of the characters 
of the actors in the tragedy. At the end of each 
scene, or for that matter at any point which seems 
well to the instructor, the students should in this 
second reading be called upon to comment orally 
on what has been done in the play and what has 
been shown. I have much more faith in the gen- 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 185 

uineness of what a boy says on his feet in the 
class room than in what he may write at home. A 
teacher with the gentlest hint may at once stop 
humbug and conventionality when it is spoken, 
but when stock phrases, conventional opinions, 
views imperfectly remembered or consciously bor- 
rowed from somebody's notes have been neatly 
copied out in a theme, no amount of red ink cor- 
rects the evil that has been done. The important 
thing is to get an appreciation, no matter how lim- 
ited or imperfect it may be, which is yet genuine 
and intelligent. 

With the matter of disputed readings, 1 may say 
in parenthesis, the teacher in the secondary school 
has no more to do than to answer doubts which 
may arise in the minds of the pupils. Personally I 
should offer to the consideration of the class the 
conjectural reading of the line 

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself. — vii, 27. 
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps its selle (saddle) ; 

because it seems to me so plausible and because it 
is likely to commend itself. For the most part, 
however, I should let sleeping dogs lie, and if no- 
body noticed the possible confusion of the text, I 
would not risk confusion of mind by calling atten- 
tion to it. 

The personal opinions of the class upon the actions 
and the acts of the characters are not difficult to 
get at in this way, and often will be the more 
fully shaped and more clearly thought out if the 



186 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

pupil is constrained to defend an unpopular view. 
I am not introducing anything new, for this sort 
of discussion is carried on by every intelligent 
teacher ; it is mentioned here only for the sake of 
completeness in the process of treating a play in 
the class-room. 

vn 

It may seem superfluous to some teachers to end 
the study as it began, by a complete, uninterrupted 
reading of the whole. It is possible that sometimes 
it would weary a class already weary of going over 
the same ground ; but if so the class has been on 
the wrong tack throughout. I make the suggestion, 
however, in confidence that the effect will be good, 
and that the students will enjoy this review. 
TThether the reading is done by teacher or pupils 
depends somewhat upon circumstances; but it 
should certainly be by the pupils if possible. 

vm 

I have carefully and intentionally omitted all 
mention of the study of the sources of the plot, the 
probable date of the play, and things of that sort 
which interest thorough Shakespearean scholars, 
and which are the chosen subjects of pedantic form- 
alists. Metrical effects and subtilties are beyond 
any pupils I have ever encountered in secondary 
schools. I do not believe that students in the 
secondary schools should be troubled with any 
study of this sort. The teacher should of course be 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 187 

prepared briefly to answer any questions of this 
nature which are put, and to show the pupils where 
in books of reference information may be found. 
The great principle is, however, to include in the 
study nothing which does not enhance the im- 
pression of the play as a work of imaginative liter- 
ature, and to omit everything which can possibly 
be spared without endangering this general ef- 
fect. 

The danger of overshadowing literary study with 
irrelevant information is great and constant. The 
amount of special knowledge which a child must 
acquire to appreciate a play of Shakespeare's is 
unhappily large in any case ; and the constant aim 
of the teacher should be to reduce this to a mini- 
mum. It is far better that a pupil go through the 
work with imaginative delight and fail to get 
the exact meaning of half the obscure passages 
than that he be bored and wearied by an exact 
explanation of all of them at the expense of the 
inspiration of the work as a whole. My painful 
doubts of the wisdom of our present scheme of in- 
sisting upon the study of literature in the common 
schools arises largely from the unhappy necessity 
of having so much explained and the too common 
lack of courage to do a sufficient amount of judi- 
cious ignoring of difficulties. 

IX 

I cannot shirk entirely, as I should be glad to 
do, the question of written work on the play we 



188 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

have been considering. 1 It is a thousand pities 
that children must be required to write anything 
about " Macbeth " when they have read it ; but it is 
evident that under existing conditions they will be 
required to produce something on paper. In regard 
to this I must repeat that they should never be 
asked to write as exercises in composition. Every- 
thing that a child writes is, in one sense, a rhe- 
torical exercise, but the teacher should impress it 
upon the class that here the chief aim is to get an 
expression of the child's thought. The more com- 
pletely the children can be made to feel that this 
is not a " composition," but a statement of im- 
pressions, of personal tastes, and of opinions, the 
better. 

What subjects are suited for written work is 
a matter which must be decided by each teacher 
according to the dispositions, the knowledge, the 
aptitude shown by the scholars in a particular 
class. It will inevitably be influenced largely by 
examination-papers ; and in the face of the lists 
of subjects provided by these it is idle to offer 
any particular suggestions. In general the test of 
a subject, so far as real benefit is concerned, is 
whether it is one upon which the student may 
fairly be expected to be able to feel and to reason 
in terms of his own experience. A subject is suited 
to his needs so long, and so long only, as he is 
able to consider it as a matter which might concern 
him personally. He may think crudely and he 

1 See chapter xi. 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 189 

must of course think inadequately ; but lie should 
at least think sincerely and without regard to what 
somebody else has thought before him. He should 
be original in the sense that he is putting down his 
own impressions, is writing thoughts which have 
not been gathered from books, but have been come 
at by considering the play in the light of whatever 
knowledge he personally has of life and human 
nature. 

Much may depend, it is worth remarking, upon 
the way a subject for theme-work is given out. 
Phrases count greatly in all human affairs, but 
especially in the development of children. Adults 
are supposed to understand words so readily as to 
be free from the danger of receiving wrong im- 
pressions from phraseology which is unfamiliar; 
but whether this be true or not, certain it is that the 
young are often bewildered by words and queerly 
affected by turns of language. The same theme- 
subject may be hopelessly incomprehensible or at 
least unhappily remote when stated in one way, 
while in another wording it is entirely possible. 
The first essential is to make clear beyond all 
possibility of doubt what is required, and this is to 
be accomplished only by using language which the 
student understands. The teacher must here as 
in all instruction keep constantly in mind that 
language that is clear and familiar to him may be 
nothing less than cryptic to the class. I remember 
a lad in a country school who was hopelessly be- 
wildered when confronted with the subject given 



190 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

out by his teacher : " What Character in this Book 
Appeals to You Most, and on what Grounds?" 
yet who wrote easily enough a very respectable 
theme when I said : " She only wants you to pick 
out the person in the book you like best, and tell 
why you like him." " Oh, is that all ? " he said at 
first incredulously. "But that isn't saying any- 
thing about grounds." The incident, absurd as it 
is, is really typical. 

I have usually found that the word " compare " 
will reduce most students to mere memories, as 
they strive almost mechanically to reproduce things 
set down in the notes of text-books. Nothing is 
more common than subjects like " Compare the 
Characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth," " Com- 
pare ' L' Allegro ' and * II Penseroso,' " and so on. 
The result is generally a statement of the criticisms 
of the characters or works mentioned, a statement 
which is a poor rehash of notes, but has of real 
comparison no trace. The comparison calls for ana- 
lytical powers far beyond anything pupils are likely 
to have developed ; and when a boy asked me not 
so very long ago what a teacher expected of him 
when he had been required to compare Sir Roger 
de Coverley and Will Honeycomb I was forced to 
reply that I was utterly unable even to conjecture. 
I regard the frequent appearance of theme-subjects 
of this sort in the secondary schools with mingled 
envy and wonder : envy for the teachers who ap- 
parently possess the power to elicit satisfactory 
work on these lines, and wonder that the power 



THE STUDY OF "MACBETH" 191 

to do this work seems so completely to disappear 
when the pupil leaves the secondary schools. 

To comment on the subjects which have actually 
stood upon entrance examinations in the last half- 
dozen years would in the first place be invidious, 
in the second would expose me to an unpleasant 
danger of seeming to challenge attention to papers 
for which I have been personally responsible, and 
in the third place would do no possible good. A 
teacher with common sense can make the applica- 
tion of the general principles I have stated if he 
choose ; and he will at least minimize the unfor- 
tunate necessity of making the written work a 
preparation for examinations. 



Memorizing is perhaps best done in connection 
with the last reading of the play, but that is a mere 
detail. Students should be encouraged to commit 
to memory the finest passages, and should be given 
an opportunity of repeating them in the class with 
as much intelligent effectiveness as possible. They 
should not, of course, be encouraged or allowed to 
rant or to " spout " Shakespeare ; but the teacher 
should insist that at least lines be recited so that 
the meaning is brought out clearly, and he should 
encourage the speaker to give each passage as if it 
were being spoken as the expression of a distinct 
personal thought. 



192 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

As I said at the beginning of this chapter, I have 
not endeavored to provide a model, but merely for 
the sake of suggestiveness to offer an illustration. 
This is at least one way in which the study of 
a play may be taken up in the secondary school. 
Whether it is the best way for a given case is 
another matter ; and I must at the risk of tiresome 
iteration add that here as everywhere the highest 
function of the teacher is" to discover what is the 
best possible method not for the world in general, 
but for the particular class to be dealt with at the 
moment. 



XIV 

CRITICISM 

What should be used in the way of tests of the 
knowledge of pupils is a puzzling question for any 
teacher. Like any other pedagogically natural and 
necessary inquiry, it can be answered only with 
a repetition of the caution that no set of hard and 
fast rules will apply to all schools or to all classes. 
Students themselves, however, would often be per- 
plexed if they were not given definite tasks to 
perform, definite questions to answer, definite facts 
to memorize. In acquiring the vocabulary needed 
for the reading of a play both teacher and pupil 
feel with satisfaction that legitimate because tan- 
gible work is being done ; and for either it is hard 
to appreciate the fact that the essential thing in 
the study of literature is too intangible to be tested 
or measured by specific standards. In what I have 
called the inspirational treatment of literature both 
are likely to feel as if a vacation is being taken 
from real work, since the impression is general that 
the only method of keeping within the limits of 
useful educational progress is dependent upon the 
accomplishing of concrete tasks. 

The need of fitting students for examinations is 
generally allowed in practice to answer the ques- 



194 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

tion what shall be done. I have already said that 
I have personally little faith in the ultimate value 
of much of the drill thus imposed, and it is hardly 
to be supposed that any intelligent teacher could 
be satisfied to let matters rest here. Certainly 
a pupil who graduates from the high school should 
have some power of criticising intelligently any 
book which comes into his hands, and of forming 
estimates of diction, general form, and to a less 
extent even of style. His criticism is necessarily 
incomplete ; but it should be genuine and sound as 
far as it goes. Such a result is not dependent upon 
the power of passing examinations, but is chiefly 
secured by precisely that training in appreciation 
which is least formal and may easily appear far- 
thest from practice in criticism. 

Some actual and definite criticism, however, is 
legitimately a part of the school- work ; and con- 
cerning this certain things present themselves to 
my mind as obvious. In the first place criticism is 
of no value, but rather is harmful, if it fails to be 
genuine. From this follows the deduction that no 
criticism can profitably be required until the child 
is old enough to form an opinion, and that at no 
stage should comments be asked which are beyond 
the child's intellectual development. In the early 
stages criticism is necessarily genuine in proportion 
as it is personal ; and it must have become entirely 
easy and natural before it can safely be made at all 
theoretic. 

In the early stages of the use of literature in 



CRITICISM 195 

education, as has been said already, the aim is to 
help the child to enjoy, and to understand so that 
enjoyment may be inevitable. This should normally 
be done in the home, but since in a large number 
of cases in the common schools the effects of home 
training in literature are so lamentably wanting, 
the teacher must in most cases undertake to begin 
at the very beginning. So far as criticism goes, the 
early stages are of course merely the rudimentary 
likings or dislikings, and the encouragement of 
expression of such tastes. Following this comes 
naturally the putting into word of reasons for pre- 
ferences. This must be done with simplicity, in the 
homeliest and most unconventional manner, and 
above all with no hint to the child that he is doing 
anything so large as to " criticise." It is precisely 
at this stage that children are most in danger of 
contracting the habit of repeating parrot-like the 
opinions of their elders. All of us have to begin 
life by receiving the views of adults, and we are all 
— except in the rare instances of extraordinary gen- 
iuses, who need not be much considered here — 
eager to conceal lack of knowledge by glib repeti- 
tions of the ideas of others. To force young pupils 
to give opinions when they have none of their own 
to give is to repeat the mistake which Wordsworth 
notes in his "Lesson for Fathers." The child in 
the poem unthinkingly declared that he preferred 
his new home to the old. His father insists upon 
a reason, and the poor little fellow, having none, is 
forced into the lie : 



196 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

" At Kilve there is no weathercock, 
And that 's the reason why." 

In the lower grades the thing which may well 
and wisely be done is to accustom the children to 
literature and to literary language. If pupils come 
to the upper grades and show that this has not 
been done, the teacher still has it to do, just as 
he must teach them the alphabet or the multiplica- 
tion-table if they arrive without the knowledge of 
these essentials to advanced work. This is the only 
safe foundation upon which work may rest, and 
although to acquire it consumes the time which 
should be put on more elaborate study, that study 
cannot be soundly done until the rudimentary 
preparation is well mastered. Criticism must be 
postponed until the pupil is prepared for it. 

Criticism, whenever it come, must begin simply, 
and it must be connected with the actual life and 
experience of the child. We are constantly en- 
dangering success in teaching by being unwilling 
to stop at the limits of the possible. Boys and girls 
will be frank about what they read if they are 
once really convinced that frankness is what is ex- 
pected and desired. They are constantly, if not 
always consciously, on the watch for what the 
teacher wishes them to say. Whatever encourages 
them to think for themselves and to state that 
thought unaffectedly and freely is what is educa- 
tionally valuable, and this only. 

Opinions concerning characters in tales perhaps 
do as well as anything for the beginning of criticism 



CRITICISM 197 

in classes. A teacher may say to a pupil : " Sup- 
pose you had known Silas Marner, what would you 
have thought of him ? " The child is easily led to 
perceive the difference between seeing or knowing 
such a man in real life, with its limited chances o£ 
any knowledge of character, of the past history of 
the weaver, of his secret thoughts, or of his feel- 
ings, and knowing him from the book which gives 
all these details so fully. The question then be- 
comes : " Suppose you had in some way found out 
about him all that the novel tells, what would you 
have felt?" The teacher will easily detect and 
should with the gentlest firmness and the firmest 
gentleness suppress any conventional answers. The 
young girl who with glib conventionality declares 
that Silas was a noble character whom she pities 
because of the way in which he was misunderstood 
may be questioned whether if she had lived in Ra- 
veloe she would have seen more than the homely, 
unsocial stranger, and whether, even had she known 
all that was concealed under his homely life, she 
could have held out against his general unpopular- 
ity. She is forced to think when she is asked 
whether among those who live around her may 
not be men and women whose lives are as pathetic 
and as misjudged as was that of the weaver. Chil- 
dren have ideas about the personages in the stories 
they hear or read, and it is only necessary to en- 
courage, in each pupil according to his tempera- 
ment, first the formulating of these clearly and then 
the frank stating of them. 



198 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

In all this sort of criticism one thing which 
should be sedulously avoided is any appearance of 
drawing a moral. Deliberately to draw a moral is 
almost inevitably to defeat any lesson which the 
tale might enforce if it is left to make its own ef- 
fect. The point to be aimed at here is not to turn 
the story into a sermon, but to make it as close to 
the individual life of the child as is possible. The 
difference is in essence that between being told 
a thing and experiencing it. Once this relation is 
established, the child feels an emotional share in 
the matter such as can be created by no amount of 
sermonizing. It may be doubted if any genuine 
child ever drew a moral spontaneously, and in all 
this work spontaneity is the beginning of wisdom. 

After the pupil has come to have some notion, 
more or less clear according to his own mental de- 
velopment, of what the personages in a story or 
a play are like, he easily goes on to determine the 
relation of one event to another, the interrelation 
between the separate parts of the work. He should 
be able to tell in a general way at least what influ- 
ence one character has upon another, and of the 
responsibility of each in the events of the narrative. 

These opinions should as much as possible be 
put into speech before being written. The subject 
should be talked out, however, in a manner so sin- 
cere and straightforward as to make conventional- 
ity impossible. Students must be held rigorously 
to honest and simple expression of real beliefs and 
feelings. In every class, and perhaps especially 



CRITICISM 199 

among girls, are likely to be some who will surely- 
repeat conventional phrases. Children pick up set 
phrases with surprising ease, and will offer them 
whenever they have reason to believe such counter- 
feit will be received instead of real coin. These 
shams are easily recognized, and they should be 
mercilessly dealt with, almost anything except sar- 
casm, that weapon which is forbidden to the teacher, 
being legitimate against such cant. The student 
who repeats a set phrase is usually effectually dis- 
posed of by a request to explain, to make clear, 
and to prove ; so that the habit of meaningless 
repetition cannot grow unless the teacher is insens- 
itive to it. The genuine ideas of the pupils may 
be developed and put into word in the class, and 
afterwards the writing out will involve getting 
them into order and logical sequence. 

It may be objected that by this process each 
scholar will borrow ideas from what he hears said 
in the class. This is in reality no serious drawback 
to the method. If the individuals are trained to 
think for themselves, each will judge the views 
which are presented in class, and will make them 
his own by shaping and modifying them. In any 
case the danger of a student's getting too many 
ideas is not large, and those he gets from his peers, 
his classmates, are much more likely to appeal to 
him and to remain in his mind than any which he 
culls from books. The notions will sometimes be 
crude, but they will be so corrected and discussed 
in recitation that they cannot be essentially false. 



200 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

Any criticism which is received from pupils, 
whether spoken or written, must first of all be in- 
telligent. Sound common sense is the only safe 
basis for any comment, and the higher the grade 
of a work of literature imaginatively the more easy 
is it to treat it in a common-sense spirit. Pupils 
should be made to feel not only that they have 
a right to any opinion of their own on what they 
read, but that they are expected to have one ; and 
that this opinion may be of any nature whatever, 
so long as they can justify it by sound reasons. 
Still farther than this, they should be allowed 
freely to cherish tastes for which they cannot give 
formal justification — provided they can show a 
reasonable appreciation of the real qualities of the 
work they like or dislike. In the higher regions 
of imaginative work the power of analysis of the 
most able critic may fail ; and it is manifestly idle 
to expect from school-children exhaustive criticism 
of high things which yet they may feel deeply. 

Since it is of so much importance that all com- 
ment and criticism shall be sincere, care must be 
taken to keep work within limits which make sin- 
cerity possible. Students must not be required to 
perform tasks which are in the nature of things 
impossible. To push beyond dealing with compara- 
tively simple matters in a frank and direct manner, 
is inevitably to encourage the use of conventional 
phrases and to replace sincerity with cant. 

A nice question connects itself with the deter- 
mination of how much it is proper and wise to re- 



CRITICISM 201 

quire of children : it is how much farther it is well 
to call upon them to criticise literature than we 
should ask them to comment on life. We need to 
know what we are doing, and though an examina- 
tion of the character and motives of a criminal in 
a book is not the same thing as would be this sort 
of criticism applied to a flesh and blood neighbor, 
the two processes are the same in essence. The 
better the teacher succeeds in arousing the imagin- 
ation of the pupil, moreover, the more closely the 
two approach. We should be sure that we are 
doing well in requiring of the young, who would 
not and should not be encouraged to dwell on 
actual crime and suffering, that they produce orig- 
inal opinions upon these things as represented in 
fiction. 

It is of course to be allowed that no teaching 
can make fictions vital and real in exactly the same 
way as is that which is known actually to have 
happened. An imaginative child vitalizes the story 
which touches him, but does not bring it home to 
himself as he would occurrences within the circle 
of his own experience. It may be urged that by 
encouraging him to analyze sin in the compara- 
tively remote world of fancy we give him a chance 
to perceive its moral hatefulness without that dis- 
trust of his fellows which might come if he were 
forced to learn the lesson from the harsher hap- 
penings of life ; and that in books the knowledge 
of character and circumstance is so much fuller 
than it is likely to be in experience that he is able 



202 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

to see more clearly. The fact remains, however, 
that we should hardly expect or desire a lucid and 
reasonable estimate of the late King and Queen of 
Servia from the school-children who are being made 
to write laborious reams on the motives and the char- 
acter of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth ; that we should 
be shocked at finding boys and girls considering in 
real life occurrences like the seduction of Olivia 
Primrose, or suspicions like those Gareth enter- 
tained of Lynette. We certainly cannot afford to 
be prurient, or to confine the young to goody-goody 
books. They may generally be safely trusted, it 
seems to me, to read any tale or poem of first-class 
merit, although its subject were as painful as that 
of " CEdipus." They will receive it as they receive 
facts of life told by a wholesome-minded person, 
often with very little real perception of the darkest 
and most sinister side. It will be as it was with 
young Copperfield when he read Fielding's master- 
piece and took delight in the hero, " a child's Tom 
Jones, a harmless creature." When it comes to 
the discussion of motives, of character, of black 
events in fiction, the case is different. The child is 
forced to take a new attitude ; to accumulate the 
opinions of his elders, to view life from their more 
sophisticated point of view ; and inevitably to re- 
ceive a fresh, and not always a desirable insight 
into evil. I am not inclined to dogmatize on this 
point, and touch upon it chiefly for the sake of 
suggesting that teachers may do well to keep it 
a little in mind. Each case, it seems to me, must be 



CRITICISM 203 

decided upon its own merit, and I at least have no 
arbitrary rules to lay down. Of one thing, however, 
I am sure, and that is that whatever is taken up 
at all should be treated with absolute and fearless 
frankness. 

All criticism of diction, style, or whatever be- 
longs to literary workmanship necessarily comes 
late. In the secondary schools I believe very little 
can profitably be done in this line at all. Of this 
I shall speak later in connection with the study of 
workmanship, but here I may say that I suppose 
most teachers to recognize the obvious absurdity of 
such questions about metres and metrical effects as 
are given on page 43. That they should be gravely 
proposed in a book of advice is indication that 
somebody believes in them ; but any class of stu- 
dents with which I have ever had to deal would be 
reduced to mechanical repetition of cant conven- 
tionality by the bare sight of such interroga- 
tions. 

One thing which is of importance is the need 
of encouraging pupils to judge of any work as a 
whole. It is so much easier to deal with details 
than with a complete work that constantly students 
leave schools where the training is in many respects 
excellent, and have gained no ability to go beyond 
the examination of particulars. The far more 
important power of estimating a book or a play 
from its total effect has not been cultivated. No 
teacher should forget that the ability to deal fairly 
with a whole is of as much more value than any 



204 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

facility in minute criticism as that whole is greater 
than any of its parts. 

This does not mean that a student can well sum- 
marize everything he reads or that he may wisely 
attempt it. It does imply that at least his attention 
shall have been directed over and over to the great 
fact that the study of details is not the study of 
a masterpiece ; that he shall have been required to 
judge a book or a play, so far as he is able, as a 
whole work and with reference to its entire effect. Id 
talking with undergraduates even about short works, 
pieces no longer than a single essay of Steele or 
a simple lyric, I constantly find that they are apt 
to have no conception whatever that they could 
or should do anything but pick out minute details. 
I ask what it amounts to as a whole, how it justifies 
itself, or what is its value as a complete poem or 
essay, and they seem utterly unable to see what 
I am driving at. The painful attempt to find out 
what I wish them to say so entirely occupies their 
minds as to render them incapable of using what- 
ever power of judgment they may possess. Not 
long ago one boy said to me : "I did n't know it 
made any difference what the poem was about if 
you could pick out things in it." " What do you 
suppose it was written for?" I asked. A look of 
painful bewilderment came into his face, and he 
answered that he supposed some folks liked to 
write that way. I inquired whether he would test 
a bridge — he was an engineering student — by 
picking out bits without seeing how the parts held 



CRITICISM 205 

together and how strong it was as a whole, and he 
returned with puzzled frankness : " But a bridge 
has a use." " Very good," was what I assured him, 
" and so does a poem. Can't you appreciate that 
mankind has not been keeping poems from gener- 
ation to generation without rinding out if they 
really are useless ? Any work of literature that is 
really good must be of value as a whole, and you 
have not got hold of it until you are able to see 
what it is for as a single thing, a complete unit." 
The fact is so evident that it seems almost absurd 
to mention it in a book intended for teachers, but 
scores of boys come yearly from the fitting-schools 
who prove how often the fact is ignored, — ignored, 
very likely, because it is taken for granted, but no 
less ignored with seriously ill effects. 

In general, criticism in the secondary schools 
should have to do only with the good points of 
work. Unless a pupil himself shows that he per- 
ceives shortcomings in what is read, it is on the 
whole the place of the instructor to keep the atten- 
tion of the class fixed on merits, while defects are 
ignored. This is not to be interpreted as meaning 
that any weakness should ever be allowed to pass 
for a merit ; or as indicating that it is ever wise to 
shirk a difficulty. Any intelligent pupil, for in- 
stance, should see for himself that the metaphors 
are sadly and inexcusably mixed in the passage : 

Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
And by opposing end them. 



206 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

It is necessary to meet this knowledge frankly, and 
to show him how it is that Shakespeare can be so 
great in spite of faults like this. It is the inclin- 
ation of childhood to feel that a man must be 
perfect to be great, but even at the cost of encoun- 
tering the difficulty of such a faith the truth must 
be told. In general, however, it is as well not to 
go out of the way to enforce the doctrine of human 
fallibility, and the youthful mind is best nourished 
by being fed on what is good, rather than by being 
taught to perceive what is bad. 

When a pupil is asked to put into words the 
reason why a piece is written, he should be re- 
quired to answer by a complete sentence, a properly 
phrased assertion. He is not unlikely to begin by 
giving a single term, an incomplete and tentative 
phrase, or at best a fragmentary statement. For 
the sake of the clearness of his own idea and of the 
habit of accurate thinking, he should be encouraged 
and expected to make the idea clear and the state- 
ment finished. Student-criticism, as I have said 
perhaps often enough already, cannot in the nature 
of things be either profound or exhaustive, but it 
should be intelligent and well defined as far as it 
goes. 



XV 

LITERAKY WORKMANSHIP 

The appreciation of literary workmanship dawns 
very slowly on the child's mind. In the secondary 
schools not much can be accomplished in the way 
of making students feel the niceties of literary art ; 
but something should be done to enforce the nature 
and the worth of technique. Much that touches 
the undergraduate's feelings he cannot analyze, 
and should never hi any work of the secondary 
schools be asked to criticise. He should, however, 
if he is to be systematically trained in the study 
of masterpieces, have knowledge enough of the 
qualities which distinguish them from lesser work 
to perceive on what their claims to superiority are 
founded. Children so naturally and so generally 
feel that distinctions which do not appeal to them 
are arbitrary, and it is of so much importance to 
guard against any feeling of this sort in the case of 
literature, that it is worth while to be at some 
pains to make distinctions perceptible, even if they 
may not always be made entirely clear. 

One of the tests of rank in civilization is appre- 
ciation of workmanship. The savage knows nothing 
of mechanics beyond the power of a lever in prying 
up a rock, the action of a bowstring, or crude facts 



208 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

of this sort. A machine to him is not only incom- 
prehensible, but supernatural : a locomotive is a 
fire-devil, and a loom or a printing-press, should he 
see one, a useful spirit. At the other end of the 
scale of appreciation of mechanical appliances is 
the inventor who devises or the trained engineer 
who understands the most complicated engines of 
modern ingenuity. Somewhere between stands any 
one of us, — the ordinary pupil presumably far 
above the savage, but far below the expert. In the 
appreciation of the art of the painter, at the bottom 
of the scale is the bushman who can look at the 
clever painting of a man and not know what it 
represents, and at the top the great painters of the 
world and those who can best enter into the spirit 
of their productions. In this scale again each of 
us stands somewhere ; the average school-boy is un- 
happily likely to be so far down as to take delight 
in the colored illustrations of the Sunday news- 
papers and to be utterly indifferent to a Titian or 
a Rembrandt. In comprehension of the value and 
effect of language, the same principle obtains. The 
scale extends from the savage tribes with a vocab- 
ulary of but a few hundred words for the entire 
speech of the race and no power of making com- 
binations beyond the simplest, to the cultivated 
nations with perhaps a couple of hundred thousand 
words and the art of producing the highest forms 
of prose and of poetry. The scale is a long one, 
and its development has taken uncounted ages ; 
but somewhere in the line each individual has his 



LITERARY WORKMANSHIP 209 

place. The degree of the civilization of a race is 
unerringly determined by its command of the writ- 
ten word ; the mental rank of the individual is no 
less certainly fixed by his power of using and of 
comprehending human speech. 

This general truth is easily brought home to 
young people by reminding them how they began 
their knowledge of language with the acquirement 
of single words and went on to appreciate how 
much more may be expressed by word-combina- 
tions. After the infantile " give " came in turn 
" p'ease give " and " please give me a drink." From 
such stages each of them has gone on learning. 
They have constantly increased their vocabulary, 
their knowledge of the value of words, of word- 
arrangement, and of sentence-construction. Gradu- 
ally by practical experience they have gained some 
appreciation of all those points which make up the 
sum of instruction in classes in composition. They 
now need to be shown that literary appreciation is 
the extension of this knowledge along the same 
lines ; that it is the means of advancing toward a 
higher place in that scale which extends from the 
ignorant savage to the sages. They may in this 
way be brought to a conception of literary tech- 
nique as a matter connected with the process of 
perception which they have been carrying on from 
childhood. 

How value in all workmanship is to be judged 
by the effects produced is admirably illustrated by 
machinery, but it is hardly less evident in the case 



210 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

of language. The simpler forms of sentence come 
to be used by the child in place of single discon- 
nected words because with sentences he can do 
more in the way of communicating his ideas and 
obtaining what he desires. To illustrate more com- 
plicated forms of language we have only to remind 
the child how carefully he orders his speech when 
he is endeavoring to coax a favor from an unwilling 
friend or a reluctant parent. The child feels him- 
self clever just in proportion as he is able so to 
frame his plea that it secures his end. He may be 
reminded that he selects most carefully the terms 
which suggest such things and ideas as favor his 
wish and avoids any that might hint at possible 
objections. Out of these homely, universal experi- 
ences of childhood it is possible to build up in the 
mind of the pupil a very fair notion of the nature 
and the use of literary workmanship ; a notion, 
moreover, which is at once sound in principle and 
entirely adequate as a working basis. 

Teaching consists principally in helping pupils 
to extend ideas which they have received from 
daily life. In this matter of literary workmanship, 
for instance, it means showing them that they have, 
without being especially conscious of the fact, a 
responsiveness to well-turned forms of speech and 
to skilful use of words. They may perhaps be 
made to appreciate this with especial vividness by 
having their attention called to the pleasure they 
take in clever or apt sayings from their fellows or 
from joking speeches. This form of illustration 



LITERARY WORKMANSHIP 211 

must, it is true, be used with discretion. It is 
always difficult to lead the mind of a child from 
the concrete to the general. Not a few children — 
and children, too, of considerable intelligence — are 
not unlikely, if jesting remarks are instanced, to 
conclude that good literary workmanship means 
something amusing. With due care, however, a 
class may be led to see how the same quality of apt 
presentation in word which pleases them in the 
sayings of schoolmates is what, carried farther, is 
the foundation of literary technique. 

Concrete examples of thoughts so well expressed 
that they have come to be almost part of common 
speech are abundant. The crisp, dry phrases of 
Pope lend themselves admirably as illustration, 
they are so neat, so compact, and, it may be added, 
so free from delicate sentiment which might be 
blurred in the handling. 

Order is heaven's first law. 

An honest man 's the noblest work of God. 

The class can supply examples in most cases, and 
be pleased with itself for being able to do so. The 
finer instances from greater writers may be led up 
to, the epigrams of Emerson, the imaginative 
phrases of Shakespeare ; and so on to longer ex- 
amples, with illustrations from the rolling para- 
graphs of Macaulay, the panoplied prose of De 
Quincey, and after that from lyrics and passages in 
blank verse. Thus much may be done in the way of 
instruction in technique fairly early in high-school 



212 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

work. With it or after it at a proper interval 
should follow instruction in regard at least to the 
mechanical differences between prose and poetry 
and what they mean. I have mentioned earlier 1 
the impression students often bring from the read- 
ing of Macaulay's " Milton." The remarks there 
quoted are selected from answers to a question of 
an entrance paper in regard to the difference in 
form and in quality between prose and poetry. 
Others from the same examination show yet more 
strikingly the general haziness of conception in the 
minds of the candidates : 

In prose words are thrown together in a way to make 
good sense and to form good English. Poetry is the 
grouping of words into a metric [mc] system. 

Poetry is often written in rhyme, while prose is ex- 
pressed in sentences. 

Poetry is the name given to writing that is written in 
verse form. One does not as a rule get the meaning of 
things when they are written in verse form. 

Prose may be verse when dealt with by such an author 
as Shakespeare or Milton, but prose usually consists of 
words arranged in sentences and paragraphs without 
any special order. 

Poetry is used as a pastime, and as such is all right. 

Between good blank verse and prose there is not much 
difference except in the form of wording in which it is 
put upon the page. 

For me, the difference between prose and poetry is 
this : Prose does not rhyme and poetry does. Under 
such a definition, all literature not poetry must be prose. 
Therefore Shakespeare's works are prose. 
1 Page 36. 



LITERARY WORKMANSHIP 213 

The illustrations might be much extended, but 
these will show the confusion which existed in the 
minds of boys who had been painfully drilled in 
the college entrance requirements. I have not se- 
lected the examples for their absurdity, although 
in a melancholy way they are droll enough ; but I 
have meant them to illustrate the confusion which 
existed in the minds of a large number of the candi- 
dates at that particular examination of what makes 
the vital difference between prose and poetry. It 
is not my contention that teachers in the secondary 
schools are to go into minute details in regard to 
poetic form ; but I do believe that it is idle to talk 
about the rank of a writer as a poet or of the 
beauty of Shakespeare's verse to students who do 
not know the difference between verse and prose. 

I may be allowed to remark in passing that to 
my mind the influence of the theories of Macau- 
lay's "Milton" alluded to above illustrates the 
difference in effect of that which appeals to the 
personal experience and feelings of boys and that 
which they are forced to receive without such 
inward interpretation. The boys who were trained 
in the " Milton " were trained also in Carlyle's 
" Burns." The Carlyle, with its eloquent appre- 
ciation of the office of the poet, the seer to whom 
has been given " a gift of vision," had apparently 
left no trace upon their minds. They had, however, 
been forced, too often unwilling, over numerous 
pages of what they were assured was poetry of the 
highest quality, yet which to them was unintelligible 



214 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

and wearisome. When Macaulay declared that 
poetry was a relic of barbarism they seized upon 
the theory eagerly because it justified their own 
feelings, because it coincided with their own im- 
pressions ; and thenceforth they doubtless held com- 
placently to their faith in the obsolete uselessness 
of verse, fortified by so high an authority. 

In the whole body of papers in the examination 
from which I have been quoting very few gave the 
impression that the writer had a clear conception 
that somehow, even if he could not express it, a 
vital difference exists between poetry and prose. 
The greater number of the boys seemed to think 
that rhyme made the distinction, or that distortion 
of sentences was the leading characteristic. Not 
one teacher in a score had succeeded in impressing 
upon his pupils the fundamental truth that the 
only excuse poetry can have for existing is that it 
fulfils an office impossible for prose. Yet nothing 
which can properly be called the study of poetry 
can be done until this prime fact is recognized 
with entire clearness. Beyond the entirely un- 
analytical enjoyment of verse, the native responsive- 
ness to rhythm, and the uncritical pleasure with 
which one learns to love literature and to seek it 
as a means of pleasure, the first, the most primary, 
the absolutely indispensable fact to be thoroughly 
impressed on a young student is that poetry uses 
form as a part, and an essential part, of its lan- 
guage. The boy must be made to understand that 
just as he tries by his tone, by his manner, by his 



LITERARY WORKMANSHIP 215 

smile, to produce in his hearers the mood in which 
he wishes them to receive what he has to say, so 
the poet by his melody, by the form of his verse, 
by his ringing rhythms or long, melting cadences, 
by his rhyme or his pauses, is endeavoring to inter- 
pret the ideas he expresses as surely as he is by the 
statements he makes. The truth which the teacher 
knows, that not infrequently the metrical effect is 
really of more value and significance than the ideas 
stated, is naturally for the most part too deep for 
the comprehension of pupils at this stage. It would 
only confuse a class to go so far as this ; but if 
we are to " study " poetry, we must have at least 
a working definition of what poetry is, and one 
which shall commend itself to the children with 
whom we are working. 

As a mere suggestion which may be of practical 
use to some teachers, 1 would call attention to 
what may be done by comparing certain pieces of 
prose with the poems which have grown out of 
them. I know of nothing better for this use than 
Tennyson's " Ballad of the Revenge " and the prose 
version of Sir Walter Raleigh from which it is 
taken. In many parts the language is almost iden- 
tical, — but with the differences between robust 
prose and a stirring lyric. The teacher who can 
make a class see what the distinction is, what the 
ballad accomplishes that Raleigh has not attempted, 
will have made clear by concrete example what 
poetry does and why it is written. Another example 
is Byron's " Destruction of Sennacherib " com- 



216 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

pared with the original version of the incident as 
given in the Bible. 

It may seem to some teachers that I am going 
rather deep, but to such I should simply propound 
the question what they understand by the study of 
poetry. The natural error of the untrained mind 
is to regard the intellectual content of a poem as 
its reason for being, and to foster such an error 
as this is to make forever improbable if not impos- 
sible any intelligent or genuine insight into poetry 
whatever. If we are not to protect children against 
this mistake, fatal as it is to any perception of the 
real province and nature of poetic art, what do we 
expect to accomplish in all the extensive attention 
which is under the present system devoted to the 
works of the masters ? 

That so many boys failed to answer satisfactor- 
ily in this matter of distinguishing between prose 
and poetry is of course not conclusive evidence 
either of general ignorance or of conscious fault on 
the part of instructors. Boys often fail in attempts 
to state distinctions about which they are yet rea- 
sonably clear in their minds, and it may well be 
that many who gave absurd replies would have no 
difficulty in discriminating between verse and prose, 
— at least when verse fulfilled the specification of 
the candidate who wrote : 

A jagged appearance is the main form-characteristic 
of blank verse. Each sentence is a separate line, and 
every other sentence is indented about a quarter of an 
inch. 



LITERARY WORKMANSHIP 217 

It would be interesting to present to pupils who 
have finished the study of the college requirements 
half a dozen brief selections, some prose and some 
poetry, but all printed in solid paragraphs. The 
number of students who could accurately and con- 
fidently distinguish in every case would be a not 
unfair test of the extent to which the distinction is 
understood. 

Teachers probably fail to make this matter clear 
because they not unnaturally assume that of course 
any intelligent lad in his teens must know the dis- 
tinction between prose and poetry. Natural as such 
an assumption may be, however, it is often — in- 
deed, I am tempted to say generally — wrong. 
The chief business of the modern teacher is after 
all the instructing of pupils in things which they 
would naturally be supposed to know already. It 
is certainly safer never to assume in any grade 
that a student knows anything whatever until he 
has given absolute proof. The weakest points in 
the education of the modern student are certainly 
those which are continually taken for granted. 

One of the most serious obstacles in the way of 
bringing young people to understand technical 
excellence and to appreciate literary value is the 
difficulty of having school-work done with proper 
deliberation. It is doubtful if any process in edu- 
cation can profitably be hurried ; it is certain that 
nothing of worth can be done in the study of liter- 
ature which is not conducted in a leisurely man- 
ner. The first care of an instructor in this delicate 



218 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

and difficult branch must be to insure a genial at- 
mosphere: an atmosphere of tranquillity and of 
serenity. No matter how tall a heap of prescribed 
books may block the way to the end of the school 
year, each masterpiece that is dealt with should be 
treated with deference and an amount of time pro- 
portioned not to its number of pages but to the 
speed with which the class can assimilate its worth 
and beauty. If worst comes to worst, I would have 
a teacher say honestly to his pupils : " We have 
taken up almost all of the term by treating what 
we have studied as literature instead of huddling 
through it as a mechanical task. For the sake of 
examinations we are forced to crowd the other 
books in. The process is not fair to them or to 
you ; so do not make the mistake of supposing 
that this is the proper way of treating real books." 
Children who have been properly trained will under- 
stand the situation and will appreciate the justice 
of the proposition. 

In this connection is of interest the remark of 
an undergraduate who said that he obtained his 
first impression of style and of the effectiveness of 
words from translating. " I suppose the truth is," 
he explained with intelligence, " that in English 
I never read slowly enough to get anything more 
than the story or what was said. When I was grub- 
bing things out line by line and word by word I at 
last got an idea of what my teachers had meant 
when they talked about the effect of the choice of 
words." Many of us can look back to the days 



LITERARY WORKMANSHIP 219 

when we learned grammar from Latin rather than 
from English, although we had been over much 
the same thing in our own tongue. In the foreign 
language we had to go deliberately and we had to 
apply the principles we learned. Only when the 
student is treating literature so slowly and thor- 
oughly that these conditions are reproduced does 
he come to any comprehension of style or indeed 
of the real value of literature. 

Readers of all ages naturally and normally read 
anything the first time for the intellectual content : 
for the story, for the information, for that mean- 
ing, in short, which is the appeal to the intellectual 
comprehension. The great majority are entirely 
satisfied to go no farther. They do not, indeed, 
perceive the reason for going farther; and they 
are too often left in ignorance of the fact that they 
have entirely missed the qualities which entitle what 
they have read to be considered literature in the 
higher sense. 

In this they are often encouraged, moreover, by 
the unhappy practice of making paraphrases. The 
paraphrasing of masterpieces is to me nothing less 
than a sacrilege. It degrades the work of art in 
the mind of the child, and contradicts the funda- 
mental principle that poetry exists solely because it 
expresses what cannot be adequately said in any 
other way. A paraphrase bears the same relation 
to a lyric, for instance, that a drop of soapy water 
does to the iridescent bubble of which it was once 
the film. The old cry against the selection of 



220 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

passages from Milton for exercises in parsing 
should be repeated with triple force against the use 
of literature as material for children to translate 
from the words of the poet into their own feeble 
phraseology. The parsing was by far the lesser evil. 
It is often necessary to have an oral explanation 
of difficult passages ; but this should be always 
expressly presented as simply a means to help the 
child to get at the real significance of a lyric, a sort 
of ladder to climb by. Any paraphrasing and ex- 
plaining should be carefully held to its place as an 
inadequate and unfortunate necessity. The class 
should never be allowed to think that any para- 
phrase really represents a poet, or that it is to be 
regarded in any light but that of apologetic toler- 
ance. 

In this matter of workmanship, as everywhere 
else in the process of dealing with literature, much 
depends upon the character of the class. Much 
must always be left unaccomplished, and much is 
always wisely left even unattempted. Often the 
teacher must go farther in individual cases than 
would naturally have been the case in a given grade 
because questions will be asked which lead on. It 
is often necessary, for instance, to explain that the 
crowding forward of events made unavoidable by 
stage conditions is not a violation of truth, but a 
conforming to the truth of art. A lad will object 
that things could not move forward so rapidly, and 
it is then wise to show him that dramatic truth 
does not include faithfulness to time, but may con- 



LITERARY WORKMANSHIP 221 

dense the events of days into an hour so long as it 
is true to human nature and to the effects those 
events would have had if occurring at intervals 
however great. Again children will object in a tale 
that the incidents are not likely to have happened ; 
and it is then necessary to make clear the distinction 
between probability and possibility, and how fiction 
may deal with either. These matters, however, are 
to be left to the intelligence of the individual 
instructor. If he cannot manage them wisely with- 
out advice, he cannot do it with arbitrary rules. 

For a last word on the matter of training stu- 
dents in the appreciation of literary form and 
workmanship I should offer a warning against at- 
tempting too much. Something is certainly una- 
voidable, but of minutiae it is well to exercise what 
Burke calls u a wise and salutary neglect." Lit- 
erary language must be learned or all intelligent 
work is utterly impossible ; since form is an im- 
portant element in all artistic language, it is not 
possible to ignore this. The extent to which work 
can and should go in the study of form in a given 
class is one of the matters which the instructor 
has to decide ; and when he has decided it he must 
resolutely refuse to allow himself to be unhappy 
because in the great realm of literature are so many 
noble tracts of which he has not even hinted to his 
class the existence. If he has done the lesser work 
well he has at least put his students in a condi- 
tion to do the greater for themselves ; if he had at- 
tempted more he might have accomplished nothing. 



XVI 

LITERARY BIOGRAPHY 

How far the biography of authors shall be a 
part of the school- work is a question which deserves 
attention. I began these talks by calling atten- 
tion to the fact that it is so much easier to teach 
details about the life of a writer than it is to train 
the youthful mind to a true appreciation of litera- 
ture itself. Teachers naturally and almost uncon- 
sciously fall into the habit of over-emphasizing this 
division of the history of literature, and questions 
about the lives of authors are dangerously easy to 
formulate for recitation or for examination-paper. 
Nothing, however, should be allowed to obscure 
the idea that the work and not the worker is the 
thing with which study should be concerned ; and 
everybody would agree that in theory the limit to 
biographical inquiry in secondary-school study is 
the extent to which a knowledge of an author's 
career or personality aids to the understanding 
of what he has written. 

To say this, however, is much like restating the 
question. Like a good deal that passes for argu- 
ment, it only puts the problem in other words ; for 
we are at once confronted with the doubt how far 
a pupil in the secondary school is likely to be 



LITERARY BIOGRAPHY 223 

helped by knowing about the facts of a writer's 
life. At the beginning of the " Spectator "Addi- 
son remarks : 

I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book 
with pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be 
a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, 
married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like 
nature, that conduce very much to the right understand- 
ing of an author. 

I may frankly confess that this is so entirely un- 
true of myself that I am perhaps not a fair judge 
for others. Since it is to me a matter almost of 
indifference who wrote a book, where or when he 
lived, what he was and what he did, I have not 
perhaps estimated rightly the effect of biography 
on children. I am firm in my belief, however, that 
for making literature more clear, more vivid, more 
attractive, the effect of a knowledge of the author's 
life is with children apt to be practically nothing. 
If they are interested in a book, they may on that 
account like to know something of the man who 
wrote it, but I have yet to find a student who really 
cared for a piece of literature because he had been 
made to learn facts about the author. That a book 
was written in a given age will account to him for 
fashions of thought strange to-day, but he is seldom 
able to carry such analysis beyond the most general 
idea. 

In regard to helping scholars in the secondary 
schools to understand a given piece of literature by 
instructing them about the personality of the 



224 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

writer, I am quite as skeptical. It may be that 
one lad in a hundred may come to a better appre- 
ciation of a book from what he knows of the tem- 
perament of the author. It is possible to point this 
out in occasional striking instances. If a boy read 
" A Modest Proposal," a teacher naturally calls 
attention to the character of Swift as having de- 
termined the ferocious form which this plea for 
humanity has taken ; in dealing with " The Journal 
of the Plague Year" it is inevitable that the in- 
structor speak of the journalistic tendency of 
Defoe, which led him to write on topics which were 
at the moment before the public. In either case 
the result is not important in the sense of going 
much beyond what the student may be made to 
feel without any mention of the writer or the 
writer's peculiarities. 

It is very easy to delude ourselves into feeling 
that we are being helpful when in reality we are 
simply being pedagogic. If our pupils were so far 
advanced as to be able to perceive the subtle rela- 
tions between character and literature, between 
the nature of a writer and the interpretation we 
are to put upon what he has written, they would in 
most cases be better fitted to instruct us than to 
receive any instruction we are able to furnish. It 
is sometimes well to give pupils things which we 
are aware they cannot grasp ; to show them the 
existence of lines of thought which they are not 
yet qualified to carry out. Our aim in this is to 
broaden their perceptions, and to direct them 



LITERARY BIOGRAPHY 225 

toward truths which later they may investigate 
for themselves. In the secondary schools, how- 
ever, very little of this sort can be profitably done 
in connection with anything so complex and subtle 
as the relation of the character of an author to his 
work. Young people must take literature at its face 
value, so to say, and in teaching them to do this 
is more than room for all the energies a teacher in 
these grades can bring to bear. 

The history of literature, its development, its re- 
lations to the evolution of human thought, should 
all be as far as possible familiar to the teacher; 
and no instructor with knowledge and enthusiasm 
is likely to ignore any of these in dealing with 
masterpieces. They must all, however, be brought 
forward with care, for it is easy to overwhelm the 
mind of the young, especially in an age like the 
present when a child goes to school with attention 
already strained by the imperative and insistent 
calls of daily life. Students on leaving the high 
school should be familiar with the place in the 
centuries of authors they have especially studied, 
and of the score or so of writers most important 
in English literature from Chaucer down. With 
the exact details of biography they need not have 
been concerned. If they have had curiosity enough 
to look these up as a matter of individual interest, 
it is well, although I am not sure that anything 
is gained by encouraging this research. To know 
of Shakespeare, of Chaucer, and of Milton, for 
instance, what may be put into a dozen lines; 






226 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

and of lesser writers to have proportionate in- 
formation, seems to me ample. The work and not 
the worker is of importance ; the book and not the 
author ; the poem and not the poet. 

Many teachers will not agree with me in giving 
to the personality and the biographies of writers 
so small a place. Every man must judge by his 
own experience, and I can only say that every year 
I deal with classes in literature I find myself delib- 
erately giving less attention to the history of liter- 
ature. I have insisted already upon the danger that 
such study shall take the place of the consideration 
of literature itself, and I have now attempted to 
reenf orce that thought by stating definitely what it 
seems to me wise to attempt in the secondary schools. 
I do not desire to be dogmatic, however, and here 
as elsewhere the conclusion of the whole matter is 
that while the question of the wisdom of giving 
extended instruction in literary history or biography 
is to be carefully considered, each instructor must 
frame the answer according to personal experience 
and the individual needs of any given class. 



XVII 

VOLUNTARY READING 

No teacher who is really concerned with the 
development of the pupil's mind can afford to ignore 
outside influences. Indeed, even were a teacher 
conceivable who, consciously or unconsciously, cared 
only to drag scholars over the prescribed course, he 
would yet be forced to take into account the effect 
of every-day life and circumstance, and under ex- 
isting conditions every teacher is sure to find that 
he is to a great extent obliged to do the work of 
the home in all that relates to the aesthetic training 
of a large number of children. In teaching litera- 
ture it is not only wise but it is easy to discover 
and to a large extent to influence whatever reading 
pupils do of their own will outside of the required 
work. 

Thoroughly to accomplish all that a teacher 
desires, or even all that is often expected of him, 
would be possible only to the gods ; and it is evi- 
dent enough that no instructor can exercise com- 
plete parental supervision over all the life of the 
pupils under him. Certain things in the training 
of the young are accomplished at home or go for- 
ever undone. Perhaps the most serious difficulty 
in this whole complicated business of education is 



228 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

that the schoolmaster is so largely called upon to 
undo what is done outside the schoolroom. He may 
at least be thankful that in the matter of reading he 
is dealing with something tangible, something in 
which so many of his flock may with skilful man- 
agement be influenced. 

In a leaflet published under the auspices of the 
New England Association of Teachers of English, 
" The Voluntary Reading of High School Scholars," 
Professor W. C. Bronson, of Brown University, 
comments on the fact that the mind of the young 
person is likely to perceive little relation between 
the literature administered at school and the books 
voluntarily read outside. He says : 

Many of our high-school youth are leading a double 
life in things literary : in the class-room Doctor Jekyll 
studies the lofty idealism of " Comus " or " Paradise 
Lost ; " outside, Mr. Hyde revels in the yellow journalism 
and the flashy novel ; and in many cases Doctor Jekyll 
does not even realize that he has changed into another 
and lower being. 

The difficulty in making boys and girls realize 
a connection between school-work and actual life is 
familiar to every teacher. I am personally con- 
vinced that one reason for this — although obvi- 
ously not the only one — is the modern tendency to 
diminish the sense of value and necessity by too 
much yielding to the inclination of the child. Coax- 
ing along the line of the least resistance is sure to 
produce an effective even if hardly conscious indif- 
ference, which is far less healthy than the temper 



VOLUNTARY READING 229 

of mind bred by insistence upon progress along the 
line of duty. Be that as it may, however, the mod- 
ern scholar generally regards school as one thing 
and life as practically another. Books read in the 
class-room, books studied, discussed as a part of 
formal and required work, are felt to be remote 
from daily existence and almost as something a bit 
unreal. They may be even enjoyed, and yet seem 
to the illogical youthful mind as having a certain 
adult quality which sets them apart from any vital 
connection with the life of youth. It is not uncom- 
mon, I believe, for a boy to like a book in his pri- 
vate capacity, reading it for simple and unaffected 
pleasure, and yet to feel it almost a duty to be 
bored by the same book when it comes up as a part 
of the work of the school-room. 

Yery likely a hint of the explanation of the 
whole matter is to be found in this last fact. In 
the first place the work of the schoolroom, how- 
ever gently administered, represents compulsion, 
and we have trained the rising generation to feel 
that compulsion is a thing to be abhorred. Per- 
haps nothing could ever make school-work the 
same as the life which is voluntary and spontane- 
ous ; but modern methods have generally not suc- 
ceeded in minimizing this difficulty. In the second 
place, teachers are too often uncareful or unable to 
soften the differences between reading without re- 
sponsibility of thoroughness and reading with the 
consciousness that class-room questionings may lie 
beyond. Almost any child has the power of treat- 



230 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

ing a book or a poem as a friend when lie reads 
for pleasure and of regarding the same book as 
an enemy when it becomes a lesson. The thing is 
normal and not unhealthy ; but it is to be reckoned 
with and counteracted. 

Professor Bronson, in his brief discussion of the 
matter, goes on to remark that where the Jekyll 
and Hyde attitude of mind exists — which to some 
degree, I believe, would be in every pupil — 

The first task of the teacher is to make the pupil fully 
realize it and to urge upon him the necessity of discrim- 
ination in his voluntary reading. For this purpose ridi- 
cule of trashy books by name and praise of good books, 
with reasons why they are good, may well fill the part 
of a recitation period, now and then, even though the 
routine work suffer a little. For the same purpose, it is 
very desirable that more of the best modern literature 
be made a part of the English course, especially in the 
earlier years, when the pupil's taste is forming, for it is 
easier to bring such works into close relation with his 
voluntary reading. The teacher of English may also 
consider himself recreant if he does not give his class 
advice about the reading of magazines and instructions 
how to read the newspapers. 

With the spirit of this I agree entirely. The letter 
does not seem to me entirely satisfactory. I have 
learned to be a little afraid of ridicule as a means 
of affecting the minds of the young in any direc- 
tion. It is the easiest of methods, but no less is it 
the one which requires the most prudence and del- 
icacy. It is the one which is most surely open to 
the error of the point of view. If the teacher tries 



VOLUNTARY READING 231 

to lessen the inclination of pupils for specific books 
by ridicule, he can do no good unless he is able to 
make the class feel that these books are ridiculous 
not only according to the standards of the teacher 
but according to the standard of the child. To 
prove that from the instructor's point of view a 
book is poor and silly amounts to little if the work 
really appeals to the young. No more is effected 
than would be accomplished if the teacher told 
lusty lads that to him playing ball seemed a foolish 
form of amusement. They appreciate at once that 
he is speaking from a point of view which is not 
theirs and which they have no wish to share. He 
must be able to make it evident that the book in 
question, with its attractions, which he must frankly 
acknowledge, is poor when judged by standards 
which the pupils feel to be true and which belong 
to the sphere of boyhood. 

I confess with contrition that in my zeal for good 
literature I have in earlier days spoken contempt- 
uously of popular and trashy books which I had 
reason to think my boys probably enjoyed and ad- 
mired. I believe I was wrong. Now I do not hesi- 
tate to say what I think about any book when a 
student asks me, but I make it a rule never in class 
to attack specific books or authors for anything 
but viciousness, and that question is hardly likely 
to arise in the secondary schools. I cannot afford to 
run the risk of alienating the sympathies of my 
pupils, and of arousing a feeling that my point of 
view is so far removed from theirs that they can- 



232 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

not trust my opinions to be sympathetic. The nor- 
mal attitude of the child toward the adult is likely 
enough to be that of believing "grown-ups" to be 
so far from understanding what children really care 
for as to be entirely untrustworthy in the selection 
of reading. The child disregards or distrusts the 
judgments of his elders not on abstract grounds, 
but merely from an instinctive feeling that adults 
do not look at things from his point of view. I 
always fear lest by an unwise condemnation of a 
book which a lad has enjoyed I may be strength- 
ening this perfectly natural and inevitably stubborn 
conviction. 

The first and most important means of influ- 
encing outside reading is by impressing upon the 
child's mind the idea that he is studying literature 
chiefly for the sake of reading to himself and for 
himself. About this should be no doubt or uncer- 
tainty. No child should for a moment be allowed 
to suppose that such dealing with books as is pos- 
sible in the school-room can be chiefly for its own 
sake, can be so much an end as a means. To allow 
him to suppose that the few works he goes over 
can be held adequately to represent the great lit- 
erary treasures of the race, or that he can be sup- 
posed to do more than to learn how to deal with 
literature for himself, is at once to make instruc- 
tion in this branch more an injury than a bene- 
fit. It would be no more reasonable than to allow 
him to think that he learns the multiplication- 
table for the sake of his school " sums " rather than 



VOLUNTARY READING 233 

that he may have an effective tool to help him in 
the practical affairs of life. 

To influence outside work of any sort is difficult, 
especially in city schools where the pupils are 
subject to so many distractions. The teacher is 
generally obliged to make his effort in this direc- 
tion almost entirely individual, treating no two 
scholars exactly in the same way, and he is not in- 
frequently obliged to employ a considerable amount 
of shrewdness in the process. " When I wish to 
talk to John Smith about his reading," a clever 
teacher said in my hearing, " I send to him to see 
me about his spelling, or his handwriting, or any- 
thing to give an excuse for a chat. Then I bring 
in the thing I am aiming at as if by accident." 
The number of instructors possessed of the adroit- 
ness, the time, and the patience for this sort of 
finesse is probably not large; but much may be 
done by words dropped apparently by chance, if only 
the instructor has the matter earnestly at heart. 

How far the relation of books in the required 
reading to books read voluntarily may profitably 
be insisted upon in class must depend largely upon 
the particular pupils involved. Every teacher will 
certainly do well to find out what his students are 
reading outside, if they are reading anything, and 
he should then consider what use to make of his 
knowledge. The very fact that he concerns him- 
self about the matter will call the attention of the 
class to the fact that a connection exists ; and that 
it is real enough to be worth heeding. Any wise 



234 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

teacher will find an advantage in having indications 
of the natural tastes and inclinations of those he 
is trying to train, and to know what the boys and 
girls really like to read will often correct a tend- 
ency to speak of the required readings in a tone 
that is outside the range of the sympathies of the 
scholars. If he knows that the girls are fond of 
weeping over " The Broken Heart of the Bar- 
maid," that the boys revel in " The Bloody Boot- 
jack," that both find " Mrs. Pigs of the Potato- 
patch " exquisitely amusing, he sees at once that 
he must be cautious in dwelling on the pathos of 
" Evangeline," the romance of " The Flight of 
a Tartar Tribe," or the humor of Charles Lamb. 
Children fed on intellectual viands so coarse would 
find real literature insipid, and must be trained 
with frank acceptance of that fact. 

To say that teachers may also often do some- 
thing in the way of arousing parents to do their 
part in guiding the reading of children is to go 
somewhat outside of my field. The public asks so 
much of teachers already that any hint of labor in 
the homes of pupils seems — and in many cases 
would be — nothing less than the suggestion of an 
impossibility. If I were to urge the matter, I 
should do it purely on the ground that teachers 
may sometimes greatly lessen the difficulty of the 
task they undertake in the school-room by a little 
judicious labor in the home. In the public schools 
to-day many children, perhaps even a majority, 
come from homes wherein no literary standard is 



VOLUNTARY READING 235 

apparent, and where for the most part none exists. 
They are being given a training which their par- 
ents did not have, and they feel themselves better 
able to direct their elders in things intellectual than 
their fathers and mothers are to advise them. In 
these cases, certainly very numerous, the teacher 
must accept the inevitable, and do what he can by 
inducing his pupils to talk with him about their 
outside reading. Where parents are more culti- 
vated, much may often be effected by the simple 
request or suggestion that the young folk be 
supervised a little in the choice of books. The 
teacher must of course use tact in doing anything 
in this line, especially in those cases where such a re- 
quest is most needed. Parents who pay least atten- 
tion to such matters are especially likely to resent 
interference with their prerogative of neglecting 
their children, though they may generally be 
reached by the flattery of a carefully phrased 
request for cooperation. Few things are more deli- 
cate to handle than neglected duties, and the fa- 
thers and mothers who shirk all responsibility for 
the mental training of their offspring must be ap- 
proached as if they jealously tried to leave nothing 
in this line for any teacher to do. 

The most common fault of young people to-day 
in connection with reading is the neglect of books 
altogether or the devouring of fiction of a poor 
quality. To urge boys and girls to read good books 
or to admonish them to avoid poor ones is seldom 
likely to effect much. Such direct and general 



236 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

appeal is sure to seem to them part of the teacher's 
professional routine work, and not to alter their 
inclinations or to make any especial difference with 
their practice. Children are led to care for good 
reading only by being made acquainted with books 
that appeal to them ; and they are protected against 
poor or injurious reading only by being given a 
taste for what is better. 

This summing-up of the situation is easily made, 
but how to make children acquainted in a vital and 
pleasant fashion with good books and how to culti- 
vate the taste is really the whole problem which 
we are studying. This is the aim and the substance 
of all genuine teaching of literature, and every- 
thing in these talks is an attempt to help toward 
an answer. When the problem of voluntary read- 
ing has been satisfactorily solved the work of the 
teacher is practically done, for the pupil is sure to 
go forward in the right direction whether he is led 
or not. All that treatment of literature which for 
convenience I have called " inspirational " is di- 
rectly in the line of developing and raising the 
taste of young readers, and beyond this I do not 
see that specific rules can be given. Personal in- 
fluence is after all what tells, and the most that can 
be done here is to call attention to the fact that 
in so far as a teacher can influence and direct the 
voluntary reading of a pupil he has secured a most 
efficient aid to his school- work in literature. 



XVIII 

IN GENERAL 

Throughout these talks I have tried to deal 
with the teaching of literature in practical fashion, 
not letting theory lead me to forget the conditions 
actually existing. To consider an ideal state of 
things might be interesting, but it would hardly 
help the teacher bothered by the difficulties of 
every-day school-work. I have intended always to 
keep well within the field of ordinary experience, 
and to make suggestions applicable to average teach- 
ing. How well I have succeeded can be judged bet- 
ter by teachers than by me ; but I wish in closing 
to insist that at least I believe that what I have 
said is every-day common sense. 

I have throughout assumed always that no 
teacher worthy of the name can be content with 
merely formal or conventional results, but will be 
determined that pupils shall be brought to some 
understanding of what literature really is and of 
why it is worthy of serious attention — to some ap- 
preciation, in a word, of literature as an art. If an 
instructor could be satisfied with fitting boys and 
girls for examinations, nothing could be simpler or 
easier ; but I am sure that I am right in believing 
that our public-school teachers are eagerly anxious 



238 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

to make of this study all that is possible in the line 
of developing and ennobling their pupils. 

Every earnest teacher knows that literature can- 
not be taught by arbitrary methods. The handling 
of classes studying the masterpieces of genius must 
be shaped by the knowledge and the inspiration of 
the individual teacher or it is naught. Neither I 
nor another may give a receipt for strengthening 
the imagination, for instilling taste, for arousing 
enthusiasm. All that any book of this sort can 
effect, and all that I have endeavored to do, is to 
protest against methods that are formal and dead- 
ening, to offer suggestions which may — even if 
only by disagreement — help to make definite the 
teacher's individual ideas, and to warn against dan- 
gers which beset the path of all of us to whom is 
committed the high office of teaching this noble 
art. 

The idea which I have hoped most strongly to 
enforce is the possibility of arousing in children, 
even in those bred without refining or intellectual 
influences, an appreciation of the spirit and the 
teachings of the great writers, a love for good 
books which may lead them to go on with the study 
after they have passed beyond the school-room. The 
best literature is so essentially human, it so truly 
and so irresistibly appeals to natural instincts and 
interests, that for its appreciation nothing is needed 
but that it be understood. To produce and to cul- 
tivate such understanding should be, I believe, the 
chief aim of any course in literature. 



IN GENERAL 239 

The understanding and the appreciation must of 
course vary according to the temperament and the 
responsiveness of the child. Miracles are not to be 
expected. No teacher need suppose that the street 
Arab and the newsboy will lie down with Brown- 
ing and rise up with Chaucer ; that Sally and Molly 
will give up chewing gum for Shakespeare, or that 
Tom, Dick, and Harry will prefer Wordsworth to 
football. In his own way and to his own degree, 
however, each child will enjoy whatever literature 
he has comprehended. As far as he can be made 
to care for anything not directly personal or ap- 
pealing to the senses, he may be made to care for 
this. Nature has taken care of the matter of fitting 
children to understand and to love literature as it 
has prepared them to desire life. To bring the 
young into appreciation of the best that has been 
thought and recorded by man, there is but one way : 
make them familiar with it. 

It is a mistake to suppose, moreover, that an 
especial sort of books is needed for children. A 
selection there should be, and it is manifestly 
necessary to exercise common sense in choice of 
works for study. A class that will be deeply inter- 
ested in " Macbeth " would be simply puzzled and 
bored by " Troilus and Cressida." Childish games 
for the intellect there may be, as there are childish 
amusements for the body ; but so far as serious 
training is concerned there is neither adult litera- 
ture nor juvenile literature, but simply literature. 

The range of the mind of a child is limited, and 



240 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

the experience demanded for the simplest compre- 
hension of a work may be necessarily beyond the 
possible reach of child life. 1 The limitations of 
youth have, however, and should have, the same 
effect in literature as in life. They restrict the 
comprehension and the appreciation of the facts of 
existence, and equally they restrict the comprehen- 
sion and the appreciation of the facts in what is 
read. The impressions which the child takes from 
what he sees or from what he reads are not those 
of his elders, although this is less generally true 
of emotions than of facts. The important point is 
that the impressions shall be vital and wholesome, 
and above all else that they be true with the actual 
verity of human experience. We all commit errors 
in the conclusions we draw from life ; and children 
will make mistakes in the lessons they draw from 
books. Books which are wise and sane, however, 
will sooner or later correct any misconceptions they 
beget, just as life in time makes clear the false con- 
clusions which life itself has produced. 

I have spoken more or less about the enjoyment 
of this study by children, and it is difficult if not 
impossible to conceive that if a class is rightly 
handled most children will not find the work a 
pleasure. It is necessary, however, to be a little on 
our guard in the practical application of the prin- 
ciple that children get nothing out of literature 
unless they enjoy it. They certainly cannot enjoy 
it unless they get something out of it ; but it will 
1 See pages 68-70. 



IN GENERAL 241 

hardly do to make the enjoyment of a class too 
entirely the test by which to decide what work the 
class shall do. Pnpils should be stimulated to solid 
effort in the way of application and concentration, 
and I have already pointed out that in mastering 
the difficulties of literary language they should be 
made to do whatever drudgery is needed, whether 
they are inclined to it or not. They cannot, more- 
over, read with intelligence anything with real 
thought in it, until they have learned concentration 
of mind. Children, like their elders, value most 
what has cost something to attain, and facile enjoy- 
ment may mean after-indifference. 

The contagion of enthusiasm is one of the means 
by which children are most surely induced to put 
forth their best efforts to understand and to assim- 
ilate. If the teacher is genuinely enthusiastic in 
his love for a masterpiece, even if this be some- 
thing that might seem to be over the heads of the 
children, he arouses them in a way impossible of 
attainment by any other means. A boy once said 
to me with that shrewdness which is characteristic 
of youth, "My teacher didn't like that book, and 
we all knew it by the way she praised it." Sham 
enthusiasm does not deceive children ; but they are 
always impressed by the genuine, and no influence 
is more powerful. 

The most serious obstacle which teachers of lit- 
erature to-day meet with, I am inclined to think, 
is the difficulty children have in seizing abstract 
ideas. 1 So long as study and instruction are con- 

1 See page 112. 



242 TALKS ON TEACHING LITERATURE 

fined to the concrete and the particular the pupil 
works with good will and intelligence. The moment 
the boundary is crossed into the region of the gen- 
eral, he becomes confused, baffled, and unable to 
follow. The algebra of life is too much for the 
brain which is accustomed to deal only with definite 
values. What is evidently needed all along the 
line is the cultivation of the reasoning powers in 
the ability to deal with abstract thought. Person- 
ally I believe that this could be best secured by 
the simplification of the work in the lower grades, 
and by the introduction of thorough courses in 
English grammar and the old-fashioned mental 
arithmetic. If some forty per cent, of the present 
curriculum could be suppressed altogether, and 
then ten per cent, of the time gained given to 
these two admirable branches, the results of train- 
ing in the lower grades, I am convinced, would 
show an enormous improvement. I may be wrong 
in this, and in any case we must deal with things 
as they exist ; and the teacher of literature must 
accept the fact that he has largely to train his class 
in breadth of thinking. He will be able to deal with 
generalizations only so far as he is assured that his 
students will grasp them, and this will generally 
mean so far as he is able to teach them to deal with 
this class of ideas. 



This book has stretched beyond the limits 
which in the beginning were set for it, and in the 



IN GENERAL 243 

end the one thing of which I am most conscious is 
of having accomplished the emphasizing of the 
difficulties of the branch of work with which it is 
concerned. If I have done nothing more than 
that, I have discouraged where I meant to help ; 
and I can only hope that at least between the lines 
if not in the actual statements may be found by the 
earnest and hard-working teachers of the land 
— that class too little appreciated and worthy so 
much honor — hints which will make easier and 
more effective their dealing with this most import- 
ant and most difficult requirement of the modern 
curriculum. 

7 



: i 






INDEX 



Abilities of children differ, 30, 60. 

Abstract ideas, 23, 112-115. 

Acting out poems, 94. 

Addison, De Coverley Papers, 128, 138, 
146-150 ; Spectator, 146, 223. 

Analysis vs. synthesis, 21. 

Art, literature an, 53 ; not to be trans- 
lated into words, 2; purpose of, 1, 
73. 

Bach, Passion Music, 116. 
Beethoven, 53 ; Ninth Symphony, 116. 
Biography, literary, 222-226. 
Blake, William, quoted, 31 ; The Tiger, 

93, 96-108. 
Bronson, W. C, Voluntary Reading, 

228. 230. 
Brown, Dr. John, quoted, 79. 
Browning, 72, 115, 239 ; Row they 

Brought the Good News, 113 ; The 

Lost Leader, 114. 
Burke, 221 ; Speech on Conciliation, 

37, 65, 138-146. 
Byron, Destruction of Sennacherib, 

133, 215. 

Carlyle, Burns, 213. 

Chaucer, 225, 239. 

Children, abilities differ, 30, 60 ; at 
disadvantage, 118 ; comply mechan- 
ically, 93 ; conceal feeling, 85 ; do 
not know how to study, 46-48 ; know 
when bored, 52 ; learn life by liv- 
ing, 19 ; must be taught in own lan- 
guage, 68 ; must do own work, 58 ; 
must form estimates, 70 ; not af- 
fected by preaching, 18 ; puzzled by 
literature, 49 ; responsive to met- 
rical effects, 117 ; skip morals, 89 ; 
their world, 18, 79 ; too much de- 
manded of, 45 ; understand only 
through personal experience, 15, 67. 

Coleridge, 72 ; Ancient Mariner, 37, 
84, 85, 181. 

College entrance requirements, 8, 30, 
138, 213 ; books, 34-38 ; editors of, 
6. 

Conventionality, how met, 197. 

Cook, May Estelle, Methods of Teach- 
ing Novels, 128. 

" Cramming," 59. 

Criticism, 193-206 ; asked of pupils, 
44 ; of trashy books, 231 ; must take 
pupil's point of view, 231. 



Decker, quoted, 169. 

Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year, 
224. 

Deliberation in work necessary, 217. 

Description, how written by pupils, 
127. 

De Quincey, 211 ; definition of litera- 
ture, 123 ; Flight of a Tartar Tribe, 
234. 

Diagrams, futility of, 6. 

Dickens, quoted, 7, 202. 

Didactic literature, 22, 109. 

Edgeworth, Maria, Parents' Assistant, 
23. 

Eliot, George, 129 ; Silas Marner, 5, 
32, 37, 56, 127, 152, 197. 

Emerson, 211 ; quoted, 65. 

Emotion, aim of literature to arouse, 
85 ; in literature, 2, 90 ; the motive 
power, 24. 

Enthusiasm, connected with culture, 
24 ; contagious, 241 ; necessary in 
teaching, 55 ; justification of, 57 ; 
reason to be reached through, 40, 
50. 

Evangeline, 234 ; questions on, 42, 
43, 45. 

Examinational teaching, 74, 121-135. 

Examinations, 28, 44, 70, 184 ; an In- 
stitute paper, 130-135 ; best pre- 
pared for by broad teaching, 122, 
boy's view of, 8, 9 ; danger of, 40 ; 
entrance, 35, 45 ; inevitable, 121 ; 
necessarily a makeshift, 4 ; not the 
aim in teaching, 28, 73; study for, 
121-130 ; valuable only as tests, 
121 ; what counts in, 125 ; what 
examinations should test, 44. 

Fables, truth of, 21. 
Fielding, Tom Jones, 202. 

Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield, 44, 
56, 152. 

Hawthorne, quoted, 167. 
Heart of Oak Series, 91. 
Honesty essential in teaching, 54. 

Illustrations, care in using, 211. 
II Percone, 32. 

Imagination essential in study of lit- 
erature, 3 : not created but devel- 



246 



INDEX 



oped, 53 ; nourished by literature, 

26. 
Inspirational use of literature, 74, 88- 

95, 117, 236. 
Irving, Life of Goldsmith, 37. 
Ivanhoe, 37, 152 ; quoted, 169 ; study 

of, 159-163. 

Johnson, Samuel, quoted, 91. 
"Juvenile " literature, 80. 

Lamb, Charles, 234. 

Language of literature, 63-67, 118 ; 
of pupils, 64, 68-70 ; value judged 
by effect, 209. 

Life, " realities of," 20. 

Limitations, inevitable, 46-48 ; must 
be accepted, 31, 196 ; youthful, 240. 

Litchfield, Mary E., quoted, 77. 

Literature, a Fine Art, 53 ; aim of, 85 ; 
algebraic, 112 ; approached through 
personal experience, 67, 69 ; deals 
with abstract ideas, 67 ; difficulty 
in teaching, 28-38 ; defined by De 
Quincey, 123 ; essentially human, 
238 ; history of, 40, 222 ; " juvenile," 
80, 239; language of, 63-67, 118; 
measured by life, 56 ; must be 
connected with life, 68; must be 
taught in language of learner, 68 ; 
not didactic, 22, 109 ; not taught by 
arbitrary methods, 238 ; nourishes 
imagination, 26; pupils indifferent 
to, 48 ; relation to life, 110 ; repro- 
duces mood, 116 ; symbolic, 113 ; 
truth in, 112-114 ; vocabulary of, 74 ; 
why included in school course, 11- 
27. See Study of Literature ; Teach- 
ing of Literature ; Literary Work- 
manship. 

Literary appreciation, may be uncon- 
scious, 93. 

Literary workmanship, 207-221. 

Longfellow, 83; Evangeline, 42, 43, 
45. 

Macaulay, 211, 214 ; Life of Johnson, 
37 ; Milton, 35, 36, 212, 213. 

Macbeth, 3, 5, 37, 40, 57, 69, 76, 77, 83, 
85, 118, 124, 202 ; false explanations 
of words in, 63 ; Miss Cook on, 128 ; 
note on, 32 ; study of, 165-192. 

Machiavellus, 32. 

Memorizing, 191. 

Merchant of Venice, 6, 81, 118. 

Metrical effects, 116 ; beyond ordin- 
ary students, 186 ; children suscep- 
tible to, 117 ; in Evangeline, 43; re- 
lation to character, 119 ; study of, 
94 ; vs. intellectual content, 216. 

Middleton, Witch, 32. 

Milton, 15, 53, 117, 220, 225 ; Comus, 
34, 85, 117, 228 ; H Penseroso, 34, 
41, 190 ; L> Allegro, 31, 41, 190 ; Ly- 
cidas, 34, 117 ; Paradise Lost, 123, 
127, 131, 228. 

Milton, Macaulay's, 35, 36, 212, 213. 



Moral, drawn by children, 129 ; not to 
be drawn by teacher, 71-73, 163, 
164, 198 ; skipped by children, 89. 

North, Plutarch's Lives, 170. 

Notes, 75, 136 ; to be studied first, 76. 

Novel, study of, 152-164. 

(Edipus, 202. 

Oral recitation, 180, 184, 198. 

Originality in children, 43. 

Parables, truth of, 21-22. 

Paraphrases, 219. 

Plutarch, 170. 

Poetry, compared with prose, 211-217 ; 

nature of, 215. 
Point of departure, 83, 143. 
Point of view, 82, 149, 180. 
Pope, quoted, 211. 
Praise, not to be given beforehand, 70 ; 

when wise, 71 . 
Prose, compared with poetry, 212-217. 

Quicken tree, 168. 

Raleigh, 25, 26, 64, 215. 

Raphael, Dresden Madonna, 57. 

Ray, 168. 

Reading, aloud, 61, 154, 177 ; final, of 

play, 186 ; first, of play, 176-179 ; 

in concert, 62 ; intelligent, basis of 

study, 61-67 ; second, of play, 179- 

186 ; voluntary, 227-236. 
Readings, disputed, 185. 
Reference, books of, 136, 137. 
Rembrandt, 208 ; The Night Watch, 

57. 
Riche, Barnabie, quoted, 167. 
Ridicule, danger of, 230. 
Roosevelt, President, 57. 

Sarcasm, forbidden, 199. 

Scott, Ivanhoe, 37, 152, 159-163, 169 ; 
Lady of the Lake, 37. 

Shakespeare, 13, 16, 46, 47, 48, 49, 53, 
57, 69, 72, 90, 117, 119, 129, 142, 
168, 170, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187, 191, 
206, 211, 212, 213, 225, 239 ; Ham- 
let, 77, 127 ; ill-judged notes on, 32 ; 
Julius Caesar, 34 ; Lear, 168 ; Mac- 
beth, 3, 5, 32, 37, 40, 57, 63, 69, 76, 
77, 83, 85, 118, 128, 165-192, 202, 
239; Merchant of Venice, 6, 81, 118 ; 
Midsummer NighVs Dream, 32 ; 
Othello, 83, 167 ;' quoted, 205 ; rea- 
son of greatness unexplained, 55 ; 
Richard III, 166 ; Romeo and Ju- 
liet, 6; Tempest, 118; Troilus and 
Cressida, 239. 

Silas Marner, 5, 37, 56, 127, 152, 197 ; 
note on, 32. 

Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, 128, 
138 ; study of, 146-150. 

Speech on Conciliation, 37, 65 ; study 
of, 138-146. 

Stevenson, Treasttre Island, 152-159. 



INDEX 



247 



Swift, A Modest Proposal, 224. 

Study of literature, in lower grades, 
30; must be deliberate, 217; not 
study about literature, 40 ; not 
study of notes, 34 ; object of, 27, 
29, 31 ; obstacles to to-day, 39-60 ; 
overweighted with details, 187 ; puz- 
zling to students, 47, 48 ; test of 
success in, 30 ; used as gymnasium, 
88. 

Summary, not a criticism, 204. 

Supernatural, the, 84 ; in Macbeth, 
181 ; in The Ancient Mariner, 181. 

Superstition, about witch, 173 ; about 
quicken tree, 168. 

Synthesis vs. analysis, 21. 

Teacher asks too much, 41-46 ; ignores 
strain on pupil, 80 ; must have clear 
ideas, 27, 49, 149 ; must take things 
as they are, 39 ; not clear as to ob- 
ject, 49 ; not equal to demands, 53- 
60 ; obliged to do work of home, 227 ; 
to lead, not to drive, 58. 

Teaching, helping to extend ideas, 210 ; 
method in, 136, 224. 

Teaching of literature, aim of, 11-27, 
69-70 ; 236 ; cannot be done by rule, 
86, 138 ; choice of selections in, 90- 
92 ; confused methods, 6 ; deals with 
emotion, 2 ; educational, 3, 74, 109- 
120 ; examinational, 3, 74, 121-135 ; 
fine passages taken up in, 80; impor- 
tance of reading aloud in, 61 ; in- 
spirational, 49, 74, 88-95, 117; must 
be adapted to average mind, 89 



preliminary, 74-87 ; uncertainty in, 
1-10 ; written work in, 126. 

Technique, instruction in. See Work- 
manship, literary. 

Tennyson, 49 ; Elaine, 37 ; Merlin and 
Vivian, 170; Princess, 37; Revenge, 
26, 215. 

Text, 136 ; model, 137. 

Thoroughness, 119. 

Titian, 53, 208. 

Translating, effect of, 218. 

Treasure Island, study of, 152-159. 

Truth in literature, 112-114. 

Vicar of Wakefield, 44, 56, 152. 

Vocabulary, growth of, 209 ; Miss 
Litchfield's view, 77 ; of Burke's 
Speech, 139 ; of lvanhoe, 160, 162 ; 
of Macbeth, 165-171 ; of prose, 137 ; 
of Sir Roger de Coverley, 147 ; of 
Treasure Island, 153, 155 ; study of, 
76-79, 125, 193 ; to be learned first, 
74, 110, n. ; to be learned from refer- 
ence-books, 76. 

Washington, George, 22. 

Words, value of, 16. 

Word- values, 17. 

Wordsworth, 49, 239; Letson for 

Fathers, 195. 
Workmanship, literary, 207-221. 
Written work, 126-130 ; comparison 

in, 190 ; description in, 127 ; in study 

of Macbeth, 187-191 ; supreme test 

in, 129. 



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